But if the Dutch were thus an important factor in the Indian wars, the French became almost the controlling influence on the other side. Except for the strip of English colonies along the sea-shore, the North American continent north of Mexico was French. This was not the result of accident or of the greater energy of that nation, but of a systematic policy, beginning with Champlain and never abandoned by his successors. This plan was, as admirably stated by Parkman, “to influence Indian counsels, to hold the balance of power between adverse tribes, to envelop in the net-work of French power and diplomacy the remotest hordes of the wilderness.” With this was combined a love of exploration so great that it was hard to say which assisted the most in spreading their dominion--religion, the love of adventure, diplomatic skill, or military talent. These between them gave the interior of the continent to the French. One of the New York governors wrote home that if the French were to hold all that they had discovered, England would not have a hundred miles from the sea anywhere. CHAMPLAIN’S BATTLE WITH THE IROQUOIS _By Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D._ From the time of the restoration of New France (1632) till the final catastrophe of 1759, Canada remained uninterruptedly French; and from the tide-water of the St. Lawrence as a base, French traders, soldiers, and settlers (_habitants_) spread westward, northward, and eventually southward. In the year of the restoration probably not over a hundred and eighty of its inhabitants might properly be called settlers, with perhaps a few score military men, seafarers, and visiting commercial adventurers. The majority of residents, of course, centred at Quebec, with a few at the outlying trading-posts of Tadoussac on the east, Three Rivers on the west, and the intervening hamlets of Beaupré, Beauport, and Isle d’Orleans. At the same time the English and Dutch settlements in Virginia, the Middle Colonies, and Massachusetts had probably amassed an aggregate population of twenty-five thousand--for between the years 1627 and 1637 upward of twenty thousand settlers emigrated thither from Europe. While the English government was engaged in efforts to repress the migration toward its own colonies, the utmost endeavors of the powerful French companies, their arguments reinforced by bounties, could not induce more than a few home-loving Frenchmen to try their fortunes amid the rigors of the New World.