Section 1.-The French in the North.

S in the South, so also in the North, papal missions closely follow in the wake of discovery; in the former section the Spaniards leading the way; in the latter, the French.

In a short period, the Spaniards subjected the continent south of 31 degrees north latitude to their dominion. France promptly entered the lists, competing for the possession of the New Hemisphere. But within seven years of the discovery of the continent the bold mariners of Normandy became familiar with the fisheries of Newfoundland, and as early as 1506, a map of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, drawn by a citizen of Honfleur, was exhibited in Paris. Two years later North American Indians were presented at the French Court.

During the next 130 years French-American exploration clus tered around three distinguished names-Verrazano, Cartier, and Champlain the second following ten years after the first, and the last seventy years after the first voyage of the second. Verrazano sailed for America in 1524. Touching the coast of North Carolina, he proceeded northward, entered New York harbor, tarried fifteen days off Rhode Island, inspected the broken line of New England, reached Newfoundland, and returned to France with a detailed account of his discoveries.

Cartier next bore the flag of France into the Western Hemisphere. Reaching Newfoundland, he entered the great gulf and river beyond, to both of which he gave the name St. Lawrence, sailed up the river as far as Montreal and returned to France. Two other expeditions under Cartier, with colonists, reached the territory of the St. Lawrence, but made no permanent settlement.

During the next fifty years, rent by civil strife at home, France

made no attempt to gain new possessions in America. Under the mild and tolerant reign of Henry IV. the star of France once more emerged from the clouds that had enshrouded its glory. After several futile attempts, the period of permanent success dawned, and French dominion in America was extended from the Frozen Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

Champlain.

Champlain, a naval officer of high repute for science, keen intellect, cautious inquiry, and versatility, had also become noted for enterprise and courage. Delighting in bold adventure, he had already, in the service of Spain, visited Porto Rico, St. Domingo, Cuba, and the City of Mexico; and his fertile, penetrating mind had suggested the project of uniting the two great oceans, by a canal at Darien. Him the merchants of Rouen selected to secure a monopoly of the fur trade in the vast regions which Cartier had explored. But Champlain could not be restricted to so narrow a sphere. Faithfully executing the designs of his patrons, he aspired not merely to the profits of trade, but also to the higher glory of founding a State. Sailing from France in 1604, after leaving colonists in Nova Scotia, he visited various points along the New England coast and the River St. Lawrence. In 1608, he founded Quebec. For about a quarter of a century, he presided over the province, extending his exploration up the Saguenay and the Ottaway, into northern New York, and as far as Lake Nippissing and the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, and entered into friendly negotiations with all the Indian tribes except the implacable Iroquois. His wise policy and energetic administration firmly established French dominion in all those vast regions.

The standard of the papacy was every-where united with that of France; Verrazano, Cartier, and Champlain all being devoted sons of Rome. When Champlain embarked with colonists the benediction of the Roman pontiff followed the families which exiled themselves to evangelize the Indians. Roman Catholic missionaries accompanied the expedition, Mary de Medici contributing money for their support; and the Indian tribes, soon "touched with the humanity of the French, listened attentively to the message of redemption." A little earlier than this, De Monts, the Huguenot founder of Nova Scotia, to obtain the free exercise of his own religion consented to allow the Indians of that province to be instructed in the Catholic faith. This was the first foothold of the papacy in the north. Two Jesuit missionaries labored among

the Micmacs in Nova Scotia, but soon removed to the coast of Maine, where, seven years before the Pilgrim fathers anchored within Cape Cod, they planted a French Catholic mission on Mt. Desert. The latter was soon destroyed by fishermen from the Virginia Colony on their way to Newfoundland.

Quebec Founded.

Quebec furnished a more secure as well as a more strategic center for French and papal aggression, and religious zeal, not less than commercial ambition, inspired its settlement. The commercial monopoly of a privileged class alone could not foster a colony; the climate" where summer hurries through the sky" did not invite to agriculture; no persecution of the Catholics in France swelled the stream of emigration, and at first "there was little except religious enthusiasm to give vitality to the province."

First, three Recollets, a reformed branch of the Franciscans, responded in 1615, one establishing a mission at Quebec, another at Tadousac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, among the Montagnais, and the other among the Hurons and other tribes of the great north-western lakes. In 1625, three Jesuit priests arrived to aid them. On the capture of Quebec by the English, in 1629, all the missionaries were carried to England. The province was restored to France in 1632, when the missions fell exclusively into the hands of the Jesuits, who soon returned to wrestle with paganism in the northern and western wilds. They traversed not only the Canadian solitudes, but also entered within the present domain of the United States, in Maine, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the Mississippi Valley. But Quebec was the center whence they issued forth on their widely-extended missions. We shall soon see them discovering the Mississippi River, founding missions at Mackinaw, on the Green Bay, in Illinois, in Arkansas, and Louisiana, all except the last three subject to the Superior at Quebec.*

"Thus," says Bancroft, "it was neither commercial enterprise nor royal ambition which carried the power of France into the heart of our continent; the motive was religion. Religious enthusiasm colonized New England, and religious enthusiasm founded Montreal, made a conquest of the wilderness on the upper lakes, and explored the Mississippi. . . . Within three years after the second

*Quebec was the burning focus of the papal faith-the strategic center of Roman Catholic propagandism, above the tropics, as Mexico, for more than 100 years, had already been, within the tropics.

occupation of Canada, the number of Jesuit priests in the province reached fifteen." They rapidly increased, and "the history of their labors is connected with the name of every celebrated town in the annals of French North America; not a cape was turned nor a river entered but a Jesuit led the way."

The Jesuits.

At an early morning hour, near the end of May, 1633, the booming of cannon from the fort on the hill at Quebec heralded the arrival of the old Governor, Samuel de Champlain, who had returned to resume the command of the province. He was accompanied by four Jesuit fathers. Conspicuous among them was Jean de Brébeuf, "a tall, stern man, with features which seemed carved by nature for a soldier, but which the mental habits of years had stamped with the visible impress of the priesthood." A descendant from a noble family of Normandy, he had become more eminent for selfmortification, austerities, and devotedness. He had been abundant in labors, in vows, in visions, and ecstasies; and, as the highest of all human attainments, he eagerly coveted the crown of martyrdom. Edward Masse, Anthony Daniel, and DaVost were his companions.

"These men," says Parkman, "aimed at the conversion of a continent. From their hovel on the St. Charles they surveyed a field of labor whose vastness might tire the wings of thought itself -a scene resplendent and appalling, darkened with omens of peril and woe. They were an advance guard of the great army of Loyola, strong in the discipline that controlled not alone the body and the will, but the intellect, the heart, the soul, and the innermost consciousness."

On Christmas day, 1635, the spirit of Champlain, the founder of New France, passed away. Who will be his successor? Will he be zealous for the faith? These anxious inquiries of the Jesuits were soon satisfactorily answered. The following June, Charles de Mortmagny, a knight of Malta, arrived. Climbing to the heights of Quebec, he prostrated himself before the uplifted crucifix and zealously espoused the cause of the missions. Slowly the population of Quebec increased. A school for Indian children, a convent, and a hospital were founded. The fort was rebuilt with stone; behind the fort a church was erected and streets were laid out. In 1640, the inhabitants did not exceed two hundred, chiefly agents of the fur company and men in their employ, few of whom had families. The remainder were priests and nuns. There were few

motives to emigration. Hunting was freely allowed, but trade and fishing were restricted, and the rude soil yielded meager crops. The climate was rigorous, and the civil affairs arbitrary. All were kept in passive subjection to the priest and the soldier, and liable, for the neglect of any religious service, to be tied like a dog, with collar and chain, to a post. Quebec life was medieval. Monastic and military appendages were every-where visible. Processions, penances, masses, and confessions were punctiliously observed. All were under the watchful eye of the Jesuit, not even the Governor excepted. A system of espionage was established-a female association, called Sainte Famille, met every Thursday in the church, with closed doors, and related, as they had previously pledged themselves to do, all they had learned, good and evil, concerning other people during the week. It was not strange that some people became restive, and that deputies were sent to France begging relief “from the hell in which the consciences of the colony were kept." But little relief, however, came.

"To the Jesuits," says Parkman, "the atmosphere of Quebec was well-nigh celestial. In the climate of New France,' they wrote, 'one learns perfectly to seek only God, to have no desire but God, no purpose but for God.' And again, 'To live in New France is to live in the bosom of God.'"

In the still depths of convent cells, and in the self-sacrificing scenes of distant missions, there were doubtless deep fervors, enkindling quenchless longings in devout hearts unperverted by the prestige of royalty, the wiles of intrigue or the patronage of power. It would be difficult to do justice to some great examples of self-forgetfulness and devotion in this truly heroic period of Jesuit missions. But others possessed a different spirit. Blinded by love of power, they aspired for extended dominion. Regarding the Church as supreme over the State, the political Jesuit schemed to make them play into each other's hands.

I would not asperse this distinguished order nor its Canadian missionaries, however credulous, supersitious, or shorn of some of the best attributes of real manhood under the self-mortifying processes of their peculiar discipline. The patient, toiling, suffering, dying sons of Loyola, scattered through those rigorous, barbarous, and far-reaching wilds, were not open to the suspicion of personal ambition. And yet, in this early period of the comparative purity of the order, their religious propagandism seems to have been directed by worldly policy, which had reference largely to the ends of commerce and national expansion. They sought to establish