To speak of the habitants of New France as downtrodden or oppressed, dispirited or despairing, like the peasantry of the old land in the days before the great Revolution, as some historians have done, is to speak untruthfully. These people were neither serfs nor peons. The habitant, as Charlevoix puts it, "breathed from his birth the air of liberty"; he had his rights and he maintained them. Shut off from the rest of the world, knowing only what the Church and civil government allowed him to know, he became provincial in his horizon and conservative in his habits of mind. The paternal policy of the authorities sapped his initiative and left him little scope for personal enterprise, so that he passed for being a dull fellow. Yet the annals of forest trade and Indian diplomacy prove that the New World possessed no sharper wits than his. Beneath a somewhat ungainly exterior the yeoman and the trader of New France concealed qualities of cunning, tact, and quick judgment to a surprising degree. These various types in the population of New France, officials, missionaries, seigneurs, voyageurs, habitants, were all the scions of a proud race, admirably fitted to form the rank and file in a great crusade. It was not their fault that France failed to dominate the Western Hemisphere. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE On the earlier voyages of discovery to the northern coasts of the New World the most informing book is H.P. Biggar's _Precursors of Jacques Cartier_ (Ottawa, 1911). Hakluyt's _Voyages_ contain an English translation of Cartier's own writings which cover the whole of the first two expeditions and a portion of the third. Champlain's journals, which describe in detail his sea voyages and inland trips of exploration during the years 1604-1618 inclusive, were translated into English and published by the Prince Society of Boston during the years 1878-1882. For further discussions of these explorations and of the various other topics dealt with in this book the reader may be referred to several works in the _Chronicles of Canada_ (32 vols. Toronto, 1914-1916), namely, to Stephen Leacock's _Dawn of Canadian History_ and _Mariner of St. Malo_; Charles W. Colby's _Founder of New France_ and _The Fighting Governor_; Thomas Chapais's _Great Intendant_; Thomas G. Marquis's _Jesuit Missions_, also to _Seigneurs of Old Canada_ and _Coureurs-de-Bois_ by the author of the present volume. In each of these books, moreover, further bibliographical references covering the several topics are provided.