The French, who early established claims to a large portion of North America, gained access to the interior of the continent by way of the Gulf and the River of St. Lawrence, and the Great Lakes with their connecting waterways.
     John Verrazano, a native of Florence, sailing under authority of Francis I. in 1523, discovered the mainland in the neighborhood of Cape Fear, N. C.  He then coasted in a northerly direction as far as Cape Breton, landing at intervals to traffic with the Indians, by whom he was well received.  He named the country New France and claimed it in the name of the king.
     Jacques Cartier made three voyages to America, between 1534 and 1542, and probably another in 1543.  In his first voyage he explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence, after passing through the strait of Belle Isle.  The gloomy and inhospitable coast of Labrador he described as "very likely the land given by God to Cain."  Visiting the picturesque Bay of Gaspe he there erected a large cross bearing a shield with the lillies of France, and the inscription "Vive le Roy de France."
     His second voyage, 1535-36, was made with a little fleet of three vessels.  Coming to anchor in a small bay he gave to it the name of St. Laurent, which name was afterward gradually transferred to the whole gulf and to the river itself, which latter he explored as far as the island of Orleans.  He was received by the Indians with an enthusiastic display of friendly feeling.  Being taken by them to the mountain which overlooked the noble panorama of river and forest at the junction of the Ottawa with the St. Lawrence, he gave to it the name "Mont Real," which name was subsequently taken and retained by the great city it now overlooks.  Cartier made a third voyage in 1542, in which, however, he made no new discoveries.  But in this year, and up to the autumn of 1543, the Saguenay river and the surrounding country were explored by Roberval, who had been appointed by Francis I as his lieutenant in Canada.  French fur traders had now found their way to Anticosti Island and to the mouth of the Saguenay, where there was an Indian trading post; but these traders made no attempt to settle the country.
     In the spring of 1602, under authority of "Henry IV, two vessels left France in charge of Pontgrave, a rich merchant of St. Malo, for the purposes of trade and colonization.  Pontgrave was accompanied by Samuel Champlain, who was later to gain lasting fame for himself

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as one of the most indefatigable of French explorers.  They ascended the St. Lawrence as far as the island of Montreal, and Champlain explored the Saguenay for a considerable distance.  The fruit of the expedition was to add largely to the knowledge which France possessed of Canada and the country around the Gulf.

EXPEDITION OF DE MONTS.

     Soon after the return of this expedition a new company was formed, at the head of which was Sieur Henri de Monts, who received a royal commission as the King's lieutenant in Canada and adjacent countries, with the special object of exploring the ill-defined region called "La Cadie," now known as Nova Scotia.  Champlain was a member of this expedition also.  In June, 1604, they sailed into the beautiful harbor of Port Royal, which Champlain called "the most commodious and pleasant place that we had yet seen on the continent."  De Monts and his associates explored the Bay of Fundy and discovered the St. John and St. Croix rivers, Champlain remained three years in Acadia, making explorations and surveys of the southern coast of Nova Scotia, of the shores of the Bay of Fundy and the coast of New England, from the St. Croix to Vineyard Sound, De Monts, after an unsuccessful attempt to effect a settlement on the St. Croix, removed his colony in the spring to the banks of the Annapolis, where he founded the city of that name.

ESTABLISHMENT OF MISSIONS.

     John de Biencourt, better known as Baron de Pontricourt, who had accompanied De Monts, and who had returned to France before him, after obtaining a renewed grant from the King, returned to Port Royal in June, 1610.  He was accompanied by Father Fléché, a Catholic priest, who, upon landing, at once began the work of converting the Indians.  A younger Biencourt, son of the above named, came out in the following year, bringing with him Fathers Biard and Masse, two Jesuit priests, who engaged with zeal in the conversion of the savages.  Other Jesuit fathers soon after came out, under the auspices of Mme. de Guercheville, who had bought the claims of de Monts, and who had also received a grant from the King, of the territory extending from Florida to Canada.  France being now ruled in reality by the cruel and ambitious Marie de Medice, as regent during the minority of her son, Louis XIII, the Jesuits were "virtually in possession of North America, as far as a French deed could give it away."  But in making this liberal grant, the French monarch failed to take into account the English, who laid claim to the same territory by right of the discoveries of the Cabots, and who had already established a colony at Virginia, and made explorations along the coast as far as the Kennebec river.

FIRST ENGLISH OPPOSITION.

     Samuel Argal, a young English sea captain from Virginia, who early in 1613 was cruising off the coast of Maine, learning from the Indians of the presence of the French in that vicinity, attacked and destroyed the settlement of St. Sauveur.  Soon after, on a second expedition made under the authority of Sir Thomas Dale, governor of Virginia, he destroyed also that of Port Royal.  The latter settlement in later years "arose from its ashes, and the fleur de-lis, or the red cross, floated from its walls, according as the French or English were the victors in the long struggle that ensued for the possession of Acadia."
     In 1608 Samuel Champlain again entered the St. Lawrence, and laid the foundations of the present city of Quebec.  This was one year after Captain Newport, representing the great company of Virginia, "to whom King James II gave a charter covering the territory of an empire, had brought the first permanent English colony of 100 persons up the James river in Chesapeake Bay.  From this time forward France and England became rivals in America."
     Champlain, who was now acting as the representative of De Monts, and who, until his

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death twenty-seven years later, held the position of lieutenant-governor, during the summer of 1609 joined a party of the Algonquin and Huron Indians of Canada, in an expedition up the Richelieu river to Lake Champlain, against the Iroquois; an act for which in later years the French had to pay dearly.  After another visit to France, for the purpose of consulting with De Monts, Champlain returned in the spring of 1610, to the St. Lawrence.  He again assisted the allied Canadian tribes against the Iroquois.  He appointed Frenchmen to learn the language and customs of the natives, so as to be of use afterwards as interpreters.  He also encouraged the policy of establishing missions. "Such a policy," says Bancroft, "was congenial to the Catholic church, and was favored by the conditions of the charter itself, which recognized the neophyte among the savages as an enfranchised citizen of France."

ATTACKS BY THE INDIANS.

     In the work of Christianizing the Indians, the Jesuit missionaries were much hampered by the hostility of the powerful Iroquois.  The ire of these war-like and omnipresent savages, of whom a fuller account will be given in the succeeding chapter, had been aroused by the part which Champlain had taken in assisting their enemies, the Algonquins and Hurons, against them.  They sent out their war parties for long distances in all directions, and torture and death was generally the fate of those who fell into their hands.  To avoid them, the missionaries, instead of following the easiest and most direct routes to the interior, were of ten obliged to make long detours through the primeval forest, wading innumerable streams, and carrying their canoes on their shoulders for leagues through the dense woods, or dragging them through shallows and rapids and by circuitous paths to avoid waterfalls.  In spite of these precautions, some of them were captured and fell victims to the relentless savages.  Father Jogues, who had been once captured and tortured by the Iroquois, and who, after escaping and revisiting France, returned in 1647 to America, was killed while endeavoring to negotiate a treaty with them.  But in spite of such events, and although, in 1648, the missionary settlements in Canada were attacked adn destroyed by the Iroquois, some of the missionaries, as well as many of their converts, falling victims to the fury of the conquerors, the zeal of the Jesuits could not be daunted.  Missionaries in greater numbers entered upon the work so fatefully begun, and continued it through all vicissitudes until at last friendly relations were brought about with their former enemies.
     These improved conditions were chiefly due a large military reinforcement which, in 1665, arrived from France under command of the Marquis de Tracy, who had been sent out by Louis XIV, to inquire into and regulate the affairs of the colony.  Within a few weeks more than 2,000 persons, soldiers and settlers, arrived in Canada.  Existing fortifications were strengthened, and four new forts were erected from the mouth of the Richelieu to Isle La Mothe on Lake Champlain.  These measures had a most salutary effect upon the Indians.  Four tribes of the Iroquois at once made overtures for peace.  The Mohawks, who held back, were punished by a powerful expedition which destroyed their villages and stores, and soon they also were ready to make terms.  For twenty years thereafter Canada "had a respite from the raids which had so severely disturbed her tranquility, and was enabled at last to organize her new government, extend her settlements, and develop her strength for days of future trial."
     Under Louis XIV Canada became a royal province, and its political and social conditions began to assume those forms which, with but slight modifications, they retained during the whole of the French regime.

EXPLORATION OF THE GREAT LAKES AND THE MISSISSIPPI.

     But French discovery and enterprise were not destined to halt upon the banks of the St. Lawrence and its tributary waterways.  In 1667 Father Claude Allouez, while engaged in missionary work among the Chippewas, first

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heard of a river to the westward called by the natives "Messippi," or great river.  This river had also been heard of by Jean Nicolet, a trader and interpreter, who, sometime before the death of Champlain, had ventured into the region of the Great Lakes, and as far as the valley of the Fox river.  He is considered to have been the first European who reached Sault Ste. Marie.
     In 1671, Simon Francois Daumont, Sieur St. Lusson, under a commission from the governor of Quebec, and accompanied by Nicholas Perrot and Louis Jolliet, took possession at Sault Ste. Marie of the basin of the lakes and the tributary rivers.  A mission had been established here some two years previously by Claude Dablon and James Marquette, it thus being the oldest settlement by Europeans with in the present limits of Michigan.
     In the spring of 1673, Louis Jolliet, a pioneer trader of great courage, coolness, and resolution, and Father Marquette, a zealous and self-sacrificing missionary, were chosen to explore the West and find the great river of which so many vague accounts had reached the settlements.  With five companions, and two canoes, they crossed the wilderness which stretched beyond Green Bay, ascended the Fox river, then with Indian guides, traversed the portage to the Wisconsin, thus reaching the lower "divide" between the valleys of the lakes and that of the Mississippi.  Launching their frail canoes on the Wisconsin, they followed its course, until, on the 17th of June, 1673, they found themselves, "with a great and in expressible joy," on the bosom of a mighty river which they recognized as the Mississippi.  Descending its current to the mouth of the Arkansas, they there gathered sufficient information from the Indians to assure them that the great river emptied its waters, not into the Gulf of California, but into the Gulf of Mexico.  Returning by way of the Illinois and Desplains rivers, they crossed the Chicago portage, and at last found themselves on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.  Jolliet reached Canada in the following summer.  Marquette remained to labor among the Indians, and died in the spring of 1675, by ths banks of a small tream stream which flows into Lake Michigan on the western shore.  Before the end of the seventeenth century, the portages at the head of Lake Michigan had become widely known, and there had been a trading post for some fifteen years at the Chicago river.
     The work, so well begun by Marquette and Jolliet, of solving the mystery that had so long surrounded the Mississippi river, was completed by Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, a native of Rouen, who had come to Canada when a young man.  Of an adventurour disposition, he had been greatly interested by the reports of the "great water" in the West, "which, in common with many others at that time, he thought might lead to the Gulf of California.  In the summer of 1668, while on an expedition with two priests, to the extreme western end of Ontario, he met and conversed with Jolliet.  Leaving his companions, he plunged into the wilderness, and for two years thereafter was engaged in independent exploration of which we have very little account.  In 1677 he visited France, and received from the King letters-patent authorizing him to build forts south and west in that region "through which it would seem a passage to Mexico can be discovered."
     In the following year, with the encouragement and support of Frontenac, then governor of Canada, and accompanied by Henri de Tonty and Father Louis Hennepin, he made an expedition to the Niagara district, and built on Lake Erie the first vessel that ever ventured on the Lakes, which he called the "Griffin."  This vessel was lost while returning from Green Bay with a cargo of furs, a calamity that was only the beginning of many misfortunes that might well have discouraged a man of less resolute and indomitable nature.  Soon afterwards he had to contend with the disaffection of his own men, who in his absence and that of Tonty, destroyed a fort which he had built on the Illinois river, near the site of the present city of Peoria.  For this act the men were subsequently punished.  Father Hennepin, while on an expedition to the upper Mississippi, had been captured by a wandering tribe of Sioux.  The Iroquois

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now began to be troublesome, their war parties attacking the Illinois and burning their villages.  Tonty had disappeared, having been obliged, while on an expedition, to take refuge from the Iroquois in a village of the Pottawatamies at the head of Green Bay.  La Salle subsequently found him at Mackinac, while on his way to Canada for men and supplies.
     "On the 6th of February, 1682," says Bourinot, in "The Story of Canada,"  "La Salle passed down the swift current of the Mississippi, on that memorable voyage, which led him to the Gulf of Mexico.  He was accompanied by Tonty and Father Membre, one of the Recollet order, whom he always preferred to the Jesuits.  The Indians of the expedition were Abenakis and Mohegans, who had left the far-off Atlantic coast and Acadian rivers, and wandered into the great West after the unsuccessful war in New England which was waged by the Sachem Metacomet, better known as King Philip.  They met with a kindly reception from the Indians encamped by the side of the river, and, for the first time, saw the villages of the Taensas and Natchez, who were worshippers of the sun.   At last on the 6th of April, LaSalle, Tonty and Dautrey, went separately in canoes through the three channels of the Mississippi, and emerged on the bosom of the Great Gulf."  Near the mouth of the river they raised a column with an inscription, taking possession of the country in the name of the King of France.  "It can be said," says Bourinot, "that Frenchmen had at last laid a basis for future empire from the Lakes to the Gulf.  It was for France to show her appreciation of the enterprise of her sons, and make good her claim to such vast imperial domain.  The future was to show that she was unequal to the task."