f in upon the huge
continent, and barely holding its own against the rigour of a northern
climate and the ferocity of merciless enemies. The whole white
population of this mighty district, including soldiers, priests, and
woodmen, with all women and children, was very far short of twenty
thousand souls, and yet so great was their energy, and such the
advantage of the central government under which they lived, that they
had left their trace upon the whole continent. When the prosperous
English settlers were content to live upon their acres, and when no axe
had rung upon the further side of the Alleghanies, the French had pushed
their daring pioneers, some in the black robe of the missionary, and
some in the fringed tunic of the hunter, to the uttermost ends of the
continent. They had mapped out the lakes and had bartered with the
fierce Sioux on the great plains where the wooden wigwam gave place to
the hide tee-pee. Marquette had followed the Illinois down to the
Mississippi, and had traced the course of the great river until, first
of all white men, he looked upon the turbid flood of the rushing
Missouri. La Salle had ventured even further, and had passed the Ohio,
and had made his way to the Mexican Gulf, raising the French arms where
the city of New Orleans was afterwards to stand. Others had pushed on
to the Rocky Mountains, and to the huge wilderness of the north-west,
preaching, bartering, cheating, baptising, swayed by many motives and
holding only in common a courage which never faltered and a fertility of
resource which took them in safety past every danger. Frenchmen were to
the north of the British settlements, Frenchmen were to the west of
them, and Frenchmen were to the south of them, and if all the continent
is not now French, the fault assuredly did not rest with that iron race
of early Canadians.

All this De Catinat explained to Adele during the autumn day, trying to
draw her thoughts away from the troubles of the past, and from the long
dreary voyage which lay before her. She, fresh from the staid life of
the Parisian street and from the tame scenery of the Seine, gazed with
amazement at the river, the woods and the mountains, and clutched her
husband's arm in horror when a canoeful of wild skin-clad Algonquins,
their faces striped with white and red paint, came flying past with
the foam dashing from their paddles. Again the river turned from blue
to pink, again the old citadel was bathed in t