CLAIM TO THE REGION OF NEW FRANCE.

141

The fiercest rivalry, however, was for the territory of North America. At the opening of the Seventeenth Century, when American colonization began to flourish, Louis XIV. claimed sovereignty over by far the largest part of the continent. A mighty struggle was to take place, to determine who should be master. We have already seen that the French preceded the English in colonial enterprise in the northern part of the continent; that settlements were made on the St. Lawrence before they were at Jamestown; that the missionaries of France had established a Roman church in the eastern portion of Maine, years before the Pilgrims landed. Four or five years prior to that event, Le Caron, an humble Franciscan, who attended Champlain, had passed into the hunting grounds of the Wyandots; and bound by his vows to the life of a beggar, had on foot, or paddling a bark canoe, gone onward, and still onward, taking alms of the savages, till he reached the shores of Lake Huron. While Quebec con. tained scarce fifty inhabitants, priests of the Franciscan order-Le Caron, Viel, Sagard—had labored for years as missionaries in Upper Canada, or made their way to the neutral Huron tribe that dwelt on the waters of the Niagara.

In 1627, Richelieu, Champlain, Razilly, with several also of the rich French merchants, received a charter from Louis XIII., containing a grant to New France, which embraced the St. Lawrence and its great basin, and all the rivers that flow into the Atlantic; as well as to Florida, the name by which the whole country south and west of Virginia was known. To all this region claim was made, and it was all laid down on the map as NEW FRANCE: its assertion brought on the collision known as the Seven Years' War.'

1 Bancroft has given one of the most effective descriptions of the character and the exploits of the Jesuit missionaries anywhere to be found.

Religious zeal, not less than commercial ambition, had influenced France to recover Canada; and Champlain, its governor, whose imperishable name will rival with posterity the fame of Smith and of Hudson, ever disinterested and compassionate, full of honor and probity, of ardent devotion and burning zeal, esteemed the salvation of a soul worth more than the conquest of an empire.' The commercial monopoly of a privileged company could not foster a colony; the climate of the country round Quebec, where summer hurries through the sky,' did not invite to agriculture; no persecutions of Catholics swelled the stream of emigration; and at first there was little, except religious enthusiasm, to give vitality to the province. Touched by the simplicity of the order of St. Francis, Chamolain had selected its priests of the contemplative class for his companions; for they were free from ambition.' But the aspiring honor of the Gallican church was interested; a prouder sympathy was awakened among the devotees at court; and, the Franciscans having, as a mendicant order, been excluded from the rocks and deserts of the New World, the office of converting the heathen of Canada, and thus enlarging the borders of French dominion, was intrusted solely to the Jesuits.

The establishment of the Society of Jesus' by Loyola had been contemporary with the Reformation, of which it was designed to arrest the progress; and its complete organization belongs to the period when the first full edition of Calvin's Institutes saw the light. Its members were, by its rules, never to 'become prelates, and could gain power and distinction

only by influence over mind. Their vows were, pov erty, chastity, absolute obedience, and a constant readiness to go on missions against heresy or heathenism. Their colleges became the best schools in the world. Emancipated, in a great degree, from the cloistral forms, separated from domestic ties, constituting a community essentially intellectual as well as essentially plebeian, bound together by the most perfect organization, and having for their end a control over opinion among the scholars and courts of Europe and throughout the habitable globe.

Thus 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. Puritanism gave New England its worship, and its schools; the Roman Church created for Canada its altars, its hospitals, and its seminaries. The influence of Calvin can be traced in every New England village; in Canada, the monuments of feudalism and the Catholic Church stand side by side; and the names of Montmorenci and Bourbon, of Levi and Condé, are mingled with memorials of St. Athanasius and Augustin, of St. Francis of Assisi, and Ignatius Loyola.

Within three years after the second occupation of Canada, the number of Jesuit priests in the province reached fifteen; and every tradition bears testimony to their worth. They had the faults of ascetic superstition; but the horrors of a Canadian life in the wilderness were resisted by an invincible passive courage and a deep internal tranquillity. Away from the amenities of life, away from the opportunities of vain

142 FRENCH AND AMERICAN POPULATION COMPARED.

The previous collisions in America between the English and the French colonies had grown out of hostilities between these powers in other parts of the world. But the great struggle now to take place, was for the supremacy of North America. More than a million English colonists were settled on the Atlantic coast, stretching a thousand miles, from the Penobscot to the St. Mary, and extending back to the Alleghany ranges, and northward to the St. Lawrence.' The number of French settlers on the continent could not have exceeded one hundred thousand; but their chain of settlements reached from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi. It would be thought that they must have held their power by a very frail tenure; but such was by no means the case. The Jesuit missionaries were the first path

In all history, no parallel can be found

finders of empire in the New World. to the daring and endurance of this wonderful class of men, as they moved up the two arterial rivers-from the St. Lawrence along the chain of the great lakes, and from the Gulf of Mexico to the head waters of the Mississippi. Winning through kindness the favor of the Indian tribes, and inspiring their awe by the imposing ceremonies of religion; displaying a zeal known only to the disciples of Loyola, they gained a sway over the savage mind which no other religion or race of men has ever been able to command. They seized upon all the strong points where wealth has since centred, and commerce made her halting-places on the great lines of transportation— Quebec, Montreal, Niagara, Detroit, Pittsburg, and the line of the Mississippi. Few and scattered as they were, these settlements were all fortified; and when the collision with English power came, they served as a continuous chain of military posts. Their control over nearly all the savage tribes through these vast regions, except the Six Nations, gave them facilities for carrying on war altogether disproportionate to the amount of their population. As early as 1683 they had founded Detroit; Kaskaskia one, and Vincennes six years later; and New Orleans in 1717.

The capture of Louisburg in 1745 had roused among the French a spirit of determination to resist the encroachments of the British colonists.

glory, they became dead to the world, and possessed their souls in unalterable peace. The few who lived to grow old, though bowed by the toils of a long mission, still kindled with the fervor of apostolic zeal. The history of their labors is connected with the origin of every celebrated town in the anuals of French America: not a cape was turned, nor a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way.-Bancroft, vol. iii. pp. 119-121.

1 Bancroft estimates the population of the Thirteen Colonies in the beginning of the French War, at one million one hundred and sixty-five thousand whites, and two hundred and sixty-three thousand negroes. After his exhaustive investigations, these estimates may be considered as final. He distributes them as follows: of European descent, fifty thousand dwelt in New Hampshire; two hundred and seven thousand in Massachusetts; thirty-five thousand in Rhode Island; and one hundred and thirty-three thousand in Connecticut which gave to New England four hundred and twenty-five thousand souls.

Of the middle colonies, New York had eighty-five thousand New Jersey, seventy-three thousand; Pennsylvania, with Delaware, one hundred and ninetyfive thousand; Maryland, one hundred and four thousand in all, four hundred and fifty-seven thousand.

They

For the southern provinces, to Virginia he assigns one hundred and sixty-eight thousand whites; North Carolina, seventy thousand: South Carolina, forty thousand or to the whole country south of the Potomac, two hundred and eighty-three thousand,

There were thus five or six of the colonies which singly contained a greater white population than all Canada, while the aggregate of all the colonies exceed. ed that of Canada fourteen-fold.

He distributes the African population, which even then, as ever afterwards, was determined chiefly by climate, by assigning six thousand to Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts; to Rhode Island, four thousand five hundred, and to Connecticut, three thousand five hundred; or fourteen thousand in all New England.

New York had eleven thousand negroes; Pennsyl vania, with Delaware, the same number; New Jersey, five thousand five hundred; and Maryland forty-four thousand: giving to the central colonies seventy-one thousand.

Of the southern colonies, Virginia had one hundred and sixteen thousand; North Carolina, twenty thousand; South Carolina, forty thousand; Georgia, two thousand; thus assigning to the country south of the Potomac, one hundred and seventy-eight thousand.