That hardy mariner, Jacques Cartier, sailed up the St. Lawrence River in 1535, but it was not until 1608, when Champlain’s vessel brought the first permanent colonists of New France, that Quebec was founded. The storm-tossed little caravel entered the St. Lawrence in the early summer of that year. Champlain landed his miscellaneous following, built “L’Habitation,” as he named the first official residence in Quebec, and laid the foundations of a small fort, an act portentous of the stirring events which the future held calmly waiting their turn and which were to give Quebec so conspicuous a place in the military annals of the New World. The first fortifications were little more than gun platforms placed at an advantageous position so as to command the river. Their site became the location of Castle St. Louis and is to-day the eastern end of the Dufferin Terrace. So it is easy to remember where Champlain laid the foundations of the new city. [Illustration: By courtesy of Detroit Publishing Company THE HEIGHTS OF QUEBEC] The new seat of power was shortly to see its master exerting his authority in a way not to be lightly mistaken. Treachery was plotted by some among Champlain’s followers, who planned to assassinate their chief and sell his new city to the Spaniards. News of this move was brought to Champlain’s ears. He caused the ringleaders to be seized by his soldiers and hung in the fort until dead. In this fashion the stronghold saw its first acts of violence. Scurvy marked the passage of the first winter in the New World of the little fort’s defenders, and by the spring only the most hardy were alive. The years which came between 1608 and 1629, the date of the first formal siege of Quebec, brought enlargement and strength to both the fort and the city. During this period both had been frequently surrounded by hostile Indians, who feared the white man’s guns too much to attempt an attack by storm but who prowled around beneath the very ramparts of the fort seeking for unwary adventurers who might be without the gates. The control of the little colony in France had passed through various hands, but always the chief executive in the New World had been its founder, the rugged Champlain. The year 1629 finds the little colony in the possession of the Company of the 100 Associates, an organization founded by His Excellency, Cardinal Richelieu, and of which His Eminence was himself a member, and the winter of this year finds the colony in its usual desperate straits, beleaguered by winter and by savage foe and deserted in all but name by its sponsors in France.