than
of the nether, world. Of these the bears were the most redoubtable,
yet as they were vulnerable to mortal weapons, she killed three of
them--all, says the story, 'as white as an egg.'

"It was two years and five months from her landing on the island,
when, far out at sea, the crew of a small fishing-craft saw a column
of smoke curling upward from the haunted shore. Was it a device of the
fiends to lure them to their ruin? They thought so, and kept aloof.
But misgiving seized them. They warily drew near, and descried a
female figure in wild attire waving signals from the strand. Thus, at
length, was Marguerite rescued, and restored to her native France,
where, a few years later, the cosmographer Thevet met her at Natron,
in Perigord, and heard the tale of wonder from her own lips."[3]

[Illustration: Francois Xavier de Laval,
First Bishop of Quebec.]

[Footnote 3: Parkman's _Pioneers of France_, p. 203.]

Meanwhile, Roberval sailed on up the St. Lawrence, and established
himself at Cap Rouge, in the deserted forts of Charlesburg-Royal built
by Cartier. But the inexperience and imprudence of the haughty
Viceroy soon put his establishment in sore straits. Ignorance of
physical conditions and disregard of natural laws of health had always
been the chief cause of suffering among these transatlantic exiles,
and Roberval now added a lamentable want of perception and solicitude.
Unlike Cartier, the inexorable Viceroy did not recognise his colonists
as companions in privation, but ruled them with a rod of iron. The
pillory, the whipping-post, and the scaffold were distressing features
in his system. Then came winter, famine, and the scurvy. Fifty of the
settlers died, and by spring even the headstrong Roberval was ready to
forsake his enterprise. His departure ends the earliest period of
French adventure in America.

[Illustration: CAP ROUGE]

Thenceforth, for more than half a century, France writhed in civil
war, and spared no vessel to explore the great river of Canada. For
all these years New France was left to its aboriginal inhabitants and
to fate.

CHAPTER II

THE ERA OF CHAMPLAIN

The name of Champlain must ever stand before all others in the history
of Quebec. He was the founder of the city, and for more than a quarter
of a century he was its very life. If repeated disappointment and
misfortune could have brought this great empire-builder to despair; if
obstacles apparently impossible to overco