NOTE.--For Canadian history down to the death of Champlain, see, among modern books, more especially PARKMAN'S _Pioneers of France in the New World_, and KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. i. {79} CHAPTER III THE SETTLEMENT OF CANADA AND THE FIVE NATION INDIANS [Sidenote: _Colonization by the medium of Chartered Companies characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe._] To trade and to colonize through the medium of Chartered Companies has been characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe. Chartered Companies have not been peculiar to England. The Dutch worked entirely through two great companies; the Danes adopted the same system; and various companies played their part in the early history of French colonization. Herein lay the main difference, in the field of colonial enterprise, between the northern peoples and the southerners who had preceded them. In the case of Spain and Portugal all was done under the immediate control of the Crown. These two nations were concerned with conquest rather than with settlement; and, if the Portuguese were traders, their commerce was not the result of private venture, but was created and supported by the Government. The Spaniards and Portuguese were first in the field. East and West lay before them, and they divided the world in secure monopoly. The northerners came in--they came in tentatively; policy kept the Governments in the background for fear of incurring war, and freedom of individual action was more ingrained in these races than in the Latin peoples of the south. So freebooters sailed here and there, at one time honoured, at another in disgrace; merchants took shares in this or that venture, and Chartered Companies came into being. [Sidenote: _French Chartered Companies._] In the case of Holland, the Netherlands East India Company and the Netherlands West India Company practically {80} included the whole nation: the state and the companies were co-extensive. In England, the companies were really private concerns, licensed by the Government, often thwarted by the Government, but, in the main, working out their own salvation or their own ruin, as the case might be. In France there was a mixture of the northern and the southern systems, as of the northern and the southern blood. There, as in England, the companies were private associations, but Court favour was to them the breath of life. Kings and ministers constantly interfered, created and undid, conferred licences and revoked them, until in no long time the Chartered Company system lost all that makes it valuable, and Frenchmen learnt to look to the Crown alone. [Sidenote: _The company of the One Hundred Associates._]