of the true faith should not be given over to heretics. urgency prevailed; and England, not more solicitous to keep than France was to regain this unappreciated continent, readily consented that it should be restored to its former owners.

His

1632

A.D.

Three years afterwards Champlain died. He saw nothing of the greatness for which he had prepared the way. The colonists numbered yet only a few hundreds. The feeble existence of the settlement depended upon the good-will of the Englishmen. who were their neighbours on the south, and of the fierce savages who lived in the forests around them. But Champlain was able to estimate, in some measure, the results of the work which he had done. He sustained himself to the end with the hope that the Canada which he loved would one day be prosperous and strong-peopled by good Catholics from France, and by savages rescued from destruction by baptism and the exhibition of the cross.

The Canada of Champlain's day was a region stretching thirteen hundred miles northward from the frontier line of the New England settlements, and seven hundred miles westward from the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Besides Canada, France possessed Newfoundland and Nova Scotia; and she claimed all the unknown territory to the north, the character and extent of which were veiled from human knowledge by cold so intense that men had not yet dared to encounter it. The great river with its tributaries, and the vast lakes out of which it flows, opened convenient access into the heart of the country, and made commerce easy. On the high lands were dense forests of oak and pine and maple; beech, chestnut, and elm. In the plains were great areas of rich agricultural land capable of supporting a large population, but useless as yet; for the Indians deemed agriculture effeminate, and chose to live mainly by the chase. The climate is severe and the winter long, especially

towards the mouth of the St. Lawrence, where at certain seasons the cold becomes greater than the human frame can endure. Everywhere the heat of summer is great, and the transition from the fierce extreme of cold to the warmth of the delightful Canadian spring is sudden. The desolate woods burst into rich green foliage; the valleys clothe themselves as by magic with grass and flowers. The great heat of summer follows with equal suddenness, and the harvest of grain or of fruits ripens as quickly as it sprang.

The cold of the Canadian winter was greatly more influential than the heat of the Canadian summer in fixing the character and pursuits of the savages who occupied the country. In a climate where frost rends asunder rocks and trees, and gives to iron power to burn as if it were red hot, life could not be sustained without a special defence against the intolerable severity. Nature had amply provided for the welfare of the wild creatures which she had called into being. The buffalo and musk ox which wandered over the plains were endowed with masses of shaggy hair which defied the cold even of a Canadian winter. The bear which prepared for himself a resting-place in the hollow trunk of an old tree, where he could sleep out the tedious months of frost, was clothed suitably to his circumstances. The beaver which built his house in the centre of Canadian streams was wrapped in rich, warm, glossy fur. The fox, the wolverine, the squirrel, and many others, enjoyed the same effective protection. The Indians needed the skins of these creatures for clothing, their flesh for food. And thus it came to pass that the French found in Canada only wild things, which walked the forests in coverings of beautiful and valuable fur; and human beings, but one degree higher in intelligence, who lived by slaying them. One of the strongest impulses which drew Europeans to Canada was not her rich soil, nor the timber of her inexhaustible forests, nor her treasures of copper and of iron, but the skins of the beasts which frequented her valleys and her woods.

Numerous tribes of savages inhabited the Canadian wilderness. They ordinarily lived in villages built of logs, and strongly palisaded to resist the attack of enemies. They were robust and enduring, as the climate required; daring in war, friendly and docile in peace.. The torture of an enemy was their highest form of enjoyment: when the victim bore his sufferings bravely, the youth of the village ate his heart in order that they might become possessed of his virtues. They had orators, politicians, chiefs skilled to lead in their rude wars. Most of their weapons were of flint. They felled the great pines of their forests with stone axes supplemented by the use of fire. Their canoes were made of the bark of birch or elm. They wore breastplates of twigs. It was their habit to occupy large houses, in some of which as many as twenty families lived together without any separation. Licentiousness was universal and excessive. Their religion was a series of grovelling superstitions. There was not in any Indian language a word to express the idea of God: their heaven was one vast banquetinghall where men feasted perpetually.

The origin of the American savage awakened at one time much controversy among the learned. Had there been a plurality of creative acts? Had Europeans at some remote period been driven by contrary winds across the great sea? If not, where did the red man arise, and by what means did he reach the continent where white men found him? When these questions were debated, it was not known how closely Asia and America approach each other at the extreme north. A narrow strait divides the two continents, and the Asiatic savage of the far north-east crosses it easily. The red men are Asiatics, who, by a short voyage without terrors to them, reached the northwestern coasts of America, and gradually pushed their way over the continent. The great secret which Columbus revealed to Europe had been for ages known to the Asiatic tribes of the extreme north.

CHAPTER III.

THE JESUITS IN CANADA.

HE Reformation had made so large progress in France that at the beginning of the seventeenth century the Protestants were able to regard them

selves as forming one-half of the nation. They had accomplished this progress in the face of terrible difficulties. The false maxim prevailed in France, as in other countries, that as there was but one king and one government, there should be but one faith. Vast efforts were made to regain this lost uniformity. The vain pursuit cost France thirty-five years of civil war, and two million French lives. At its close half her towns were in ashes; her industries had perished; her fields were desolated. The law gave no protection to Protestants: a Catholic noble riding with his followers past a Protestant meeting-place occasionally paused to slaughter the little congregation, and then resumed his journey, not doubting that he had done to God and to the State an acceptable service. The Protestants undertook their own armed defence; made laws for themselves; maintained in so far as it was possible a government distinct from that of their persecutors. There were two nations of not extremely unequal strength living on the soil of France, with fierce mutual hatred raging in their hearts, and finding expression in incessant war, assassination, massacre. At length these horrors were allayed by the Edict of Nantes, which conceded full liberty of conscience.

1598

A. D.

The Pope cursed this hateful concession; but the strong arm of Henry IV. maintained it. For a time the ferocity of religious strife was mitigated, and the adherents of the new faith enjoyed unwonted calm.

The sword was no longer a weapon of theological war; the deep and irrepressible antagonism of the old and the new beliefs found now its inadequate expression by pen and by speech. The interest which prevailed regarding disputed ecclesiastical questions became exceptionally strong. Theological dogmas filled an influential place in the politics of the time. The Protestant Synod adopted in its Confession of Faith an article which charged the Pope with being Antichrist. His Holiness manifested "a grand irritation;" the King declared that this article threatened to destroy the peace of the kingdom. For four years a fierce contest raged, till another Synod withdrew the offending article by express order of the King, after having with unanimous voice declared that the charge was true. Philippe de Mornay, one of the King's most trusted advisers, and a devoted adherent of Protestantism, had written a treatise against the Real Presence, supporting his argument by five or six thousand quotations, which he had laboriously gathered from the writings of the early Fathers. One of the bishops impugned his accuracy, and Mornay challenged him to a public discussion. The meeting-place was the grand hall of the palace of Fontainebleau. The combatants debated in presence of the King, before a brilliant audience of great officers of State, of lords and ladies who formed the royal court, of all great dignitaries of the kingdom. So effectively, for the time, had the Reformation and its consequences dispelled the religious apathy of France.

It had, indeed, left unaffected the manners of a large portion of French society. The great lords retained professional assassins among their followers. It was as easy then to get the address of a stabber or a poisoner as it is now to get that of a hotel. In