For fifty years France paid no attention to Canada, and the few settlers or their descendants left by Cartier or Roberval were unheeded and unsuccoured; but in 1598 the taste for colonial adventure revived, and Henry IV. appointed the Marquis de la Roche his lieutenant-general in Canada, with power to partition discovered lands into seigniories and fiefs, to be held under feudal tenure, and as a compensation for military services when required. La Roche fitted out but one vessel, and unfortunately reinforced his crew with forty malefactors from the prisons. It is sufficient here to state that Sable Island, a barren sand bank, and a rude part of Acadia (now called Nova Scotia), were first settled on and afterwards abandoned; and that to private enterprise, rather than to royal decree, the French nation were at last indebted for a permanent and profitable colonisation in Canada. M. Pontgrave, a merchant of St. Malo, who had distinguished himself by making several profitable fur voyages to Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay river, engaged as an associate M. Chauvin, a naval officer who obtained from Henry IV. in 1600 a commission, granting him an exclusive trade with Canada, and other privileges. Chauvin associated other persons with him in his enterprise, and made two successful trading voyages to Tadoussac, where the Indians gave the most valuable furs in exchange for mere trifles. Chauvin died in 1603, but Commander De Chatte, or De Chaste, governor of Dieppe, founded a company of merchants at Rouen, to carry on the fur trade on an extensive scale; an armament was equipped under Pontgrave, and a distinguished naval officer named Samuel Champlain, who sailed up the St. Lawrence as far as Sault St. Louis in 1603. On the death of Chauvin, which happened in the ensuing year, Pierre Dugast Sieur de Monts, a Calvinist and gentleman of the bedchamber to Henry IV. received a patent conferring on him the exclusive trade and government of the territories situate between 40° and 54° of lat.; and although of the reformed religion, the Sieur was enjoined to convert the native Indians to the Roman Catholic tenets. De Monts continued the Company founded by his predecessors, and fitted out an expedition in 1604 of four vessels, two of which were destined for Acadia, then an object of attraction. Suffice it to say, that trading ports were established at several places: the fur trade prosperously carried on; the Acadian colony neglected; and Quebec made the capital of the future New France, founded by Samuel Champlain on the 3d July, 1608. The various Indian tribes contiguous to the new settlement, namely, the Algonquins, the Hurons, &c. who were at war with the Iroquois, or Five Nations, solicited and obtained the aid of the French. Champlain taught them the use of fire-arms, which the Iroquois also acquired from their English friends in the adjacent territory; and hence began the ruinous wars,