e atrocities they were compelled to
witness, in other instances implicated in them and sharing the bloody
profits of them. But, unquestionable as was the martial prowess of the
Spanish soldier and adventurer, and the fearless devotion of the Spanish
missionary, there appears nothing like systematic planning in all these
immense operations. The tide of conquest flowed in capricious courses,
according as it was invited by hopes of gold or of a passage to China,
or of some phantom of a Fountain of Youth or a city of Quivira or a
Gilded Man; and it seemed in general to the missionary that he could not
do else than follow in the course of conquest.

It is wholly characteristic of the French people that its entering at
last upon enterprises of colonization and missions should be with large
forecasting of the future and with the methods of a grand strategy.

We can easily believe that the famous "Bull of Partition" of Pope
Alexander VI. was not one of the hindrances that so long delayed the
beginnings of a New France in the West. Incessant dynastic wars with
near neighbors, the final throes of the long struggle between the crown
and the great vassals, and finally the religious wars that culminated in
the awful slaughter of St. Bartholomew's, and ended at the close of the
century with the politic conversion and the coronation of Henry
IV.--these were among the causes that had held back the great nation
from distant undertakings. But thoughts of great things to be achieved
in the New World had never for long at a time been absent from the minds
of Frenchmen. The annual visits of the Breton fishing-fleets to the
banks of Newfoundland kept in mind such rights of discovery as were
alleged by France, and kept attention fixed in the direction of the
great gulf and river of St. Lawrence. Long before the middle of the
sixteenth century Jacques Cartier had explored the St. Lawrence beyond
the commanding position which he named Montreal, and a royal commission
had issued, under which he was to undertake an enterprise of "discovery,
settlement, and the conversion of the Indians." But it was not till the
year 1608 that the first permanent French settlement was effected. With
the _coup d'oeil_ of a general or the foresight of a prophet,
Champlain, the illustrious first founder of French empire in America, in
1608 fixed the starting-point of it at the natural fortress of Quebec.
How early the great project had begun to take shape in the lead