Religion has been a potent force in colonial history. On the one hand it has promoted emigration. It carried the Huguenots from France to other lands. It peopled New England with Puritans. On the other hand, it has sent forerunners of the coming white men among the coloured races, bearers of a message of peace, but too often bringing in their train the sword. As explorers and as pioneers, missionaries have done much for colonization; but from another point of view they have endangered the cause by going too fast and too far. In South Africa, a hundred years ago, the work, the speeches, and the writings of Protestant missionaries led indirectly to the dispersion of colonists, to race feuds, and to political complications which, but for this agency, would certainly have been postponed, and might possibly never have arisen. Similarly in Canada, Jesuit activity and forwardness added to the difficulties and dangers with which the French settlers and their rulers had to contend. [Sidenote: _Montreal and the Five Nations._] The Governor, who vainly attempted to dissuade the founders of Montreal from going so far afield, was right in his warnings. Very few were the French in North America, their struggle for existence was hard, their enemies were watchful and unrelenting. Safety lay in concentration, in making Quebec a strong and comparatively populous centre, in keeping aloof from the Iroquois, instead of straying within {86} their range. To form a weak settlement 160 miles higher up the river than Quebec, within striking distance of the Five Nations, was to provoke the Indians and to offer them a prey. This was the immediate result of the foundation of Montreal. Year after year went by, and there was the same tale to tell: a tale of a hand to mouth existence, of settlers cooped up within their palisades, ploughing the fields at the risk of their lives, cut off by twos and threes, murdered or carried into captivity. Moreover, between Montreal in its weakness and the older and stronger settlement at Quebec, there was an element of jealousy. What with rival commandants and rival ecclesiastics, controversy within and ravening Iroquois without, the early days of the French in Canada were days of sorrow. [Sidenote: _The Huron missions._] Far away from civilization in the seventeenth century was Montreal, but further still was the Huron country. The first white man to visit the Hurons was the Recollet friar, Le Caron, in the year 1615, and from that date onward, till Kirke took Quebec, a very few Franciscan and Jesuit priests preached their faith by the shores of Georgian Bay. Suspended for a short time, while the English held Canada, the missions were resumed by the Jesuits in 1634, foremost among the missionaries being Father de Breboeuf, who had already worked among the Hurons, and came back to work and die.