As a further anti-colonizing influence, there was to be reckoned with, the love of the French for their own land. The traveler and historian, Lescarbot, himself a Frenchman and a good colonist, speaking of colonizing had said: "If we fail, we must attribute it partly to ourselves who are located in too goodly a land to wish to leave it, and need be in no fear of finding a subsistence therein."
The same sentiment had prevailed up to 1641. But there had been one element alone, which can justly claim to have had some lasting influence and success in the colonizing movement, and that had been the spirit of religious adventure fostered by Champlain, which made the small garrison of Quebec into a small, but not insignificant or undignified, centre of colonization.
We are to see this same desire to bear the light of Christianity and civilization, as the prime moving force of the new movement to settle in Canada, animating the founders of the new Company of Montreal, which is now to appear.
Hence it is necessary to read into the story of the foundation of Montreal that of the heroism of virtue and of high purpose, of spiritual and physical endurance.
We have followed the history of Montreal from its discovery by Jacques Cartier in 1535, to the coming of Champlain in 1603, and his choice in 1611 of La Place Royale as the site of a future settlement, ratified by him and others for a period of many years. Still the site of the port at the Grand Sault had never become more than an annual trading port towards which it was the aim of the traders to push, at the opening of navigation, to meet the natives at this most convenient spot at the end of the Ottawa Valley.
It was reserved for the new Company of Montreal, by the powers given it by their charter granted on December 17, 1640, to put this long cherished idea of a permanent settlement into realization.
The various steps leading to this must now be traced. We have seen that the Company of New France, that of the Hundred Associates or Partners, was in possession of the country from 1627. Among other powers the Associates had the privilege of making certain concessions, but it was not until the death of Champlain, anticipated as we have seen during the two months' illness and more before it occurred on Christmas day, 1635, that the privilege seems to have been used under the following circumstances.
THE FOUNDATION OF MONTREAL. THE FIRST ASSOCIATES OF THE COMPANY OF MONTREAL.
(A bas relief from the Maisonneuve Monument by Philippe Hébert)