THE figure of the founder of Quebec rises in history, strong and effective, above an ever-changing environment of turmoil and unrest and strife, as to-day his great statue stands in motionless dignity above the shifting crowds of pleasure-seekers and tourists who flit about “the Terrace” at Quebec. Take him when you will; tossing in a cockleshell on the mountainous rollers of the Atlantic; testing the soil of some newly discovered region with his grain and garden-seeds; taking careful inventory of the products of woods and earth and waters; training his refractory red allies to some method in their military madness; fighting the loathsome death-dealing scurvy; surrounded by disheartened or treacherous followers; even cheated and befooled by a frivolous notoriety-hunter—Samuel de Champlain shows himself ever calm, cheerful, heroic—a man of rare sincerity and singleness of purpose. Not much is known of the ancestry of this truly noble Frenchman, beyond the names of his father and mother—Antoine Champlain and Marguerite Le Roy. Yet we can guess that from his paternal ancestry at least he inherited a good portion of courage and simplicity, for Antoine and his brother, the more notable “Provençal Captain,” belonged to the race of sea-faring men, who always and everywhere seem to be plain, bold, simple folk. The circumstances of his early life, moreover, tended to form the character of the future founder of New France on firm, strong lines. [Illustration: Chateau Frontenac and Dufferin Terrace.] Samuel de Champlain was born in 1570, or possibly a year or two earlier, at Brouage, then a busy little seaport on the Bay of Biscay—now a mouldering hamlet, nearly two miles inland, for the ocean has retreated, and the business of the place has ebbed away with the receding tides. A monument, neither very ancient nor very imposing, has been erected near the little church, to keep green in his birth-place the memory of the founder of Quebec; but, according to the account of a recent visitor, the tumble-down cottages, sleepy street, and crumbling old walls can give no idea of what Brouage was in its palmy days. “The best seaport in France,” wrote one enthusiast, about the time Champlain was born. “Here you hear every known language spoken!” said another, thirty years later; and the lad drank in from the talk of these sailors of many tongues and nations that love of “navigation,” which, he says, “has powerfully attracted me ever since my boyhood, and has led me on to expose myself almost all my life to the impetuous buffetings of the sea.” [Illustration: A "Bateau".] [Illustration: Old Breakneck Steps.]