o the planters.
Ninety were sent over in 1620. The shores were lined with young men
waiting to see them land, and in a few days everyone of the fair
immigrants had found a husband. Wives had to be paid for in tobacco--the
currency of the colony--in order to recompense the company for the
expense of importing them. The price of a wife was at first fixed at one
hundred and twenty-five pounds of tobacco--equal to about $90--but
afterward rose to $150. The women were disposed of on credit, when the
suitor had not the cash, and the debt incurred for a wife was considered
a debt of honor. Virginia became a colony of homes. The settlement was
saved from becoming a refuge of the criminal and the outcast, and in the
unions formed at that time many of the families in the country had their
origin. That some of the refuse of English society floated into the
colony is true, and many of the unruly children of London and other
English towns, were sent there as apprentices. But the unruly street boy
often has the diamond of energy and genius concealed within the rude
exterior, and in the genial clime of Virginia, with an opportunity to be
a man among men, the young apprentice from the slums of London or
Plymouth proved himself to possess qualities of value to the community.

CHAPTER III.

The French in Canada--Champlain Attacks the Iroquois--Quebec a Military
Post--Weak Efforts at Colonization--Fur-traders and Missionaries--The
Foundation of New France--The French King Claims from the Upper Lakes to
the Sea--Slow Growth of the French Colonies--Mixing with the Savages--The
"Coureurs de Bois."

Although the French navigator, Jacques Cartier, had sailed up the St.
Lawrence as early as 1534, it was not until 1608--the year after the
foundation of Jamestown--that Samuel de Champlain effected a permanent
settlement at Quebec. It happened that the Indians of the St. Lawrence
region were at bitter enmity with the Iroquois, or Five Nations, who
lived in the present State of New York, and this enmity had no small
influence in deciding the subsequent duel between France and England for
empire in North America. Champlain accepted the St. Lawrence Indians as
allies, and consented to lead a war party against the Iroquois. In 1609,
the year after the settlement of Quebec, Champlain entered the lake which
bears his name, accompanied by a number of the St. Lawrence Indians, and
engaged the Iroquois in battle. The warriors of the Five Nations