nopoly of the
American fur-trade for twelve year's, such a clamor arose within the
walls of St. Malo that the obnoxious grant was promptly revoked.

But soon a power was in the field against which all St. Malo might
clamor in vain. A Catholic nobleman of Brittany, the Marquis de la
Roche, bargained with the King to colonize New France. On his part, he
was to receive a monopoly of the trade, and a profusion of worthless
titles and empty privileges. He was declared Lieutenant-General of
Canada, Hochelaga, Newfoundland, Labrador, and the countries adjacent,
with sovereign power within his vast and ill-defined domain. He could
levy troops, declare war and peace, make laws, punish or pardon at
will, build cities, forts, and castles, and grant out lands in fiefs,
seigniories, counties, viscounties, and baronies. Thus was effete and
cumbrous feudalism to make a lodgment in the New World. It was a scheme
of high-sounding promise, but in performance less than contemptible. La
Roche ransacked the prisons, and, gathering thence a gang of thieves
and desperadoes, embarked them in a small vessel, and set sail to plant
Christianity and civilization in the West. Suns rose and set, and the
wretched bark, deep freighted with brutality and vice, held on her
course. She was so small that the convicts, leaning over her side,
could wash their hands in the water. At length, on the gray horizon they
descried a long, gray line of ridgy sand. It was Sable Island, off the
coast of Nova Scotia. A wreck lay stranded on the beach, and the surf
broke ominously over the long, submerged arms of sand, stretched far out
into the sea on the right hand and on the left.

Here La Roche landed the convicts, forty in number, while, with his
more trusty followers, he sailed to explore the neighboring coasts,
and choose a site for the capital of his new dominion, to which, in due
time, he proposed to remove the prisoners. But suddenly a tempest from
the west assailed him. The frail vessel was forced to run before the
gale, which, howling on her track, drove her off the coast, and chased
her back towards France.

Meanwhile the convicts watched in suspense for the returning sail. Days
passed, weeks passed, and still they strained their eyes in vain across
the waste of ocean. La Roche had left them to their fate. Rueful and
desperate, they wandered among the sand-hills, through the stunted
whortleberry bushes, the rank sand-grass, and the tangled cranberry
vine