In the days when New France "had two fountain heads, one in the cane brakes of Louisiana, and the other in the snows of Canada," a charter was given by Louis XIII. to the Hundred Association Company, which was thereby invested with rights almost monarchical, together with injunctions to do all that was possible for Holy Church which was consistent with the keeping of a watchful eye upon such earthly advantages as might accrue from a monopoly of the fur trade and the acquisition of new territory. It was in 1634, under the governorship of Champlain, that Jean Nicolet, a fearless explorer, well versed in woodcraft and in the speech of many aboriginal tribes, was the first paleface to see the white cliffs of Mackinac, as he was also the first to carry back to civilization tidings of a great new sea, the Lac des Ilinese, or Michigan, which he had discovered. That he perished by the capsizing of his canoe in the St. Lawrence River was a great loss to the infant colonies to whom his sixteen years' experience in frontier life would have been very valuable. The path he opened, was, however, soon followed by others. The explorers and traders, Des Grosselliers, Radisson, Perrot, and their fellows did for the world what the Jesuits, the Recollets, and the Sulpicians did for the Church. It is in the _Relations_ sent home by the priests that we learn what were the trials overcome by those dauntless sons of "the sturdy North." Perhaps from no country but France, and in no other years than the glittering, romantic, covetous, daring, devoted years of the seventeenth century, could have come adventurers so tireless and churchmen so selfless as these. To read their simple, patient chronicles is to have new belief in man, new faith in the Church Universal, "which is the blessed company of all faithful people," and to clasp hands across years and above creeds with those courageous pioneers and with those humble saints. The story of Mackinac is for many years the story of the French in Canada. "Not a cape was turned," says Parkman, "not a river was entered, but a Jesuit led the way." Every year the establishment of new posts pushed the realms of the Unknown Territory nearer and nearer to the sunset. Poor little posts they were, slenderly garrisoned, and feebly armed, but beside each one rose a chapel and a cross where the "bloody salvages" might learn, if they would, the religion of the fathers. The missionaries made, perhaps, but few converts to their faith, but they made many friends for their country by their kindly offices to the sick, the aged, the dying, and the infant, by the gentleness and urbanity of their high breeding, and by the perpetual sacrifice of their lives of love and loyalty. Of their hardships we can only read between the lines of their brave, uncomplaining _Relations_, but what litanies of pain, sorrow, and disappointment, what _Te Deums_ of hope and rejoicing lie in these marks, oft recurring on their queer old maps: