nd
fifty Indians shouting songs of joy carried his great canoe on their
shoulders. When the soldiers left the canoes and marched forward to
the fight, they bore Frontenac in an easy chair. He did not destroy his
enemy, for many of the Indians fled, but he burned their chief village
and taught them a new respect for the power of the French. It was
the last great effort of the old warrior. In the next year, 1697,
was concluded the Peace of Ryswick; and in 1698 Frontenac died in his
seventy-ninth year, a hoary champion of France's imperial designs.

The Peace of Ryswick was an indecisive ending of an indecisive war.
It was indeed one of those bad treaties which invite renewed war. The
struggle had achieved little but to deepen the conviction of each side
that it must make itself stronger for the next fight. Each gave back
most of what it had gained. The peace, however, did not leave matters
quite as they had been. The position of William was stronger than
before, for France had treated with him and now recognized him as King
of England. Moreover France, hitherto always victorious, with generals
who had not known defeat, was really defeated when she could not longer
advance.

CHAPTER II. Quebec And Boston

At the end of the seventeenth century it must have seemed a far cry
from Versailles to Quebec. The ocean was crossed only by small sailing
vessels haunted by both tempest and pestilence, the one likely to
prolong the voyage by many weeks, the other to involve the sacrifice of
scores of lives through scurvy and other maladies. Yet, remote as
the colony seemed, Quebec was the child of Versailles, protected and
nourished by Louis XIV and directed by him in its minutest affairs. The
King spent laborious hours over papers relating to the cherished colony
across the sea. He sent wise counsel to his officials in Canada and
with tactful patience rebuked their faults. He did everything for the
colonists--gave them not merely land, but muskets, farm implements, even
chickens, pigs, and sometimes wives. The defect of his government
was that it tended to be too paternal. The vital needs of a colony
struggling with the problems of barbarism could hardly be read correctly
and provided for at Versailles. Colonies, like men, are strong only when
they learn to take care of themselves.

The English colonies present a vivid contrast. London did not direct
and control Boston. In London the will, indeed, was not wanting, for the
Stua