of this
trade and of the land which offered it. So France determined to colonize
Canada and in 1608, when Champlain founded a tiny colony at Quebec, the
most Christian King had announced a resolution to hold the country. Ere
long Malbaie was to have a European owner.

[Illustration: CAP A L'AIGLE FROM THE WEST SHORE OF MURRAY BAY

"A great headland sloping down to the river in bold curves."]

As Champlain went up from Tadousac to make his settlement of Quebec he
noted Malbaie as sufficiently spacious. But its many rocks, he thought,
made it unnavigable, except for the canoes of the Indians, whose light
craft of bark can surmount all kinds of difficulties. Perhaps Champlain
is a little severe on Malbaie which, when one knows how, is navigable
enough for coasting schooners, but his observations are natural for a
passing traveller. In the years after Quebec was founded no more can be
said of Malbaie than that it was on the route from Tadousac to Quebec
and must have been visited by many a vessel passing up to New France's
small capital on the edge of the wilderness. In the summer of 1629 the
occasional savages who haunted Malbaie might have seen an unwonted
spectacle. Three English ships, under Lewis Kirke, had passed up the
river and to him, Champlain, with a half-starved force of only sixteen
men, had been obliged to surrender Quebec. Kirke was taking his captives
down to Tadousac when, opposite Malbaie, he met a French ship coming to
the rescue. A tremendous cannonade followed, the first those ancient
hills had heard. It ended in disaster to France, and Kirke sailed on to
Tadousac with the French ship as a prize.

When peace came France began more seriously the task of settling Canada.
Though inevitably Malbaie would soon be colonized, it was still very
difficult of access. A wide stretch of mountain and forest separated it
from Quebec; not for nearly two hundred years after Champlain's time was
a road built across this barrier. Moreover France's first years of rule
in Canada are marked by conspicuous failure in colonizing work. The
trading Company--the Company of New France or of "One Hundred
Associates"--to which the country was handed over in 1633, thought of
the fur trade, of fisheries, of profits--of anything rather than
settlement, and never lived up to its promises to bring in colonists.
It made huge grants of land with a very light heart. In 1653 a grant was
made of the seigniory of Malbaie to Jean Bourdon, S