The survey of the colonization of New France up to 1641 shows that it
had been singularly unfruitful. The government of France had never
been more than lukewarm after Cartier's voyages. He had given a poor
account of the climate of the country, and the loss of a quarter of his
crew from scurvy must have confirmed it. Roberval sent on a government
expedition, lost fifty of his company and thereafter the private
companies all had their disasters from famine and disease to record,
beginning with that of Chauvin's, who, having left sixteen men at
Tadoussac for the winter, found eleven there on his return.
Were it not for the insatiable desire for commercial gain, through fur
monopolies, Canada would have been utterly deserted. There were no
industries developed to attract colonists. There had been no gold mines
or other treasures exploited to create rushes into a new and harsh
country, such as that of the Yukon of late years.
Agriculture, under difficult circumstances, and unsupported by
government, or by the companies pledged to encourage it, had also
failed. At the end of little more than one hundred years after Jacques
Cartier's visit to the St. Lawrence there were only 200 Frenchmen
near its waters. Of these about a hundred were fur traders, and their
employees, at once furriers and soldiers; and the rest for the greater
part were the religious, of three institutions, and their dependents.
As a further anti-colonizing influence, there was to be reckoned
with, the love of the French for their own land. The traveler and
historian, Lescarbot, himself a Frenchman and a good colonist, speaking
of colonizing had said: "If we fail, we must attribute it partly to
ourselves who are located in too goodly a land to wish to leave it, and
need be in no fear of finding a subsistence therein."
The same sentiment had prevailed up to 1641. But there had been
one element alone, which can justly claim to have had some lasting
influence and success in the colonizing movement, and that had been
the spirit of religious adventure fostered by Champlain, which made
the small garrison of Quebec into a small, but not insignificant or
undignified, centre of colonization.
We are to see this same desire to bear the light of Christianity and
civilization, as the prime moving force of the new movement to settle
in Canada, animating the founders of the new Company of Montreal, which
is now to appear.
Hence it is necessary to read into the story of the foundation of
Montreal that of the heroism of virtue and of high purpose, of
spiritual and physical endurance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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