ce. In much the same
spirit Henry IV saw De Monts set sail for Acadia. The king would
contribute nothing from the public purse or from his own. Sully, his
prime minister, vigorously opposed colonizing because he wished to
concentrate effort upon domestic improvements. He believed, in the
second place, that there was no hope of creating a successful colony
north of the fortieth parallel. Thirdly, he was in the pay of the
Dutch.

{18}

The most that Henry IV would do for French pioneers in America was to
give them a monopoly of trade in return for an undertaking to transport
and establish colonists. In each case where a monopoly was granted the
number of colonists was specified. As for their quality, convicts
could be taken if more eligible candidates were not forthcoming. The
sixty unfortunates landed by La Roche on Sable Island in 1598 were all
convicts or sturdy vagrants. Five years later only eleven were left
alive.

For the story of Champlain it is not necessary to touch upon the
relations of the French government with traders at a date earlier than
1599. Immediately following the failure of La Roche's second
expedition, Pierre Chauvin of Honfleur secured a monopoly which covered
the Laurentian fur trade for ten years. The condition was that he
should convey to Canada fifty colonists a year throughout the full
period of his grant. So far from carrying out this agreement either in
spirit or letter, he shirked it without compunction. After three years
the monopoly was withdrawn, less on the ground that he had failed to
fulfil his contract than from an outcry on the part of merchants who
desired their share of the trade. To {19} adjudicate between Chauvin
and his rivals in St Malo and Rouen a commission was appointed at the
close of 1602. Its members were De Chastes, governor of Dieppe, and
the Sieur de la Cour, first president of the Parlement of Normandy. On
their recommendation the terms of the monopoly were so modified as to
admit to a share in the privilege certain leading merchants of Rouen
and St Malo, who, however, must pay their due share in the expenses of
colonizing. Before the ships sailed in 1603 Chauvin had died, and De
Chastes at once took his place as the central figure in the group of
those to whom a new monopoly had just been conceded.[3]

We are now on the threshold of Champlain's career, but only on the
threshold. The {20} voyage of 1603, while full of prophecy and
presenting