It has been noted above how great are the contrasts in the story of Canada, and, so far as it was colonized, how much in the system was artificial, how little was the result of natural growth. The record of Canada, as compared with that of the English colonies in America, is much more a series of biographies, much less a chronicle of a community. Of the great men, whose lives and doings make up Canadian history in French times, it may be said that some created Canada, while others were Canada's own creations. In other words, some were in but not of Canada; they came out from France to make, to rule, to save, or to try to save, the French colony on the St. Lawrence; while others, though many of them also came out from home, and all of them were in their way builders of New France, yet were the outcome of Canada itself, the result of the unbounded freedom of its backwoods, {106} their deeds being done and their lives spent mainly beyond the limits of the Canadian settlements. To the first class belong, among others, Champlain (though Champlain's name might in truth appear in either list), Talon, Frontenac, and Montcalm. The second class comprises the names of explorers such as La Salle, of Du Luth, the noted _coureur de bois_, and of Iberville, the bold guerilla chief, who raided the English in Newfoundland and on Hudson Bay, who carried out La Salle's unfinished work in Louisiana, and of whom, when dead, Charlevoix wrote: 'The late M. d'Iberville, who had all the good qualities of his country without any of its defects, would have led them (his countrymen) to the end of the world.'[7] [Footnote 7: Charlevoix's _Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières_, Eng. tr., 1763, p. 104.] Of these last there will be more to tell. Of the former class it may be said that, while not children of Canada, their influence on the history of the colony and their distinction in Canadian annals was in proportion to the extent to which New France was the land of their adoption. If we except discoverers, the three greatest names in Canadian history are Champlain, Frontenac, and Montcalm, all three of whom died at Quebec. [Sidenote: _Count Frontenac._]