Canada -- Description and travel; Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France); Indians of North America -- Canada
For several years Champlain was constantly obliged to visit France for
the purpose of urging on the tardily provided aids for the colony. The
court would not interest itself in the affairs of New France since a
company had undertaken their conduct, and the merchants, always limited
in their views to mere commercial objects, cared but little for the fate
of the settlers so long as their warehouses were stored with the
valuable furs brought by the Indian hunters. These difficulties would
doubtless have smothered the infant nation in its cradle, had it not
been for the untiring zeal and constancy of its great founder. At every
step he met with new trials from the indifference, caprice, or
contradiction of his associates, but, with his eye steadily fixed upon
the future, he devoted his fortune and the energies of his life to the
cause, and rose superior to every obstacle.
In 1620, the Prince of Conde sold the vice-royalty of New France to his
brother-in-law, the Marshal de Montmorenci, for eleven thousand crowns.
The marshal wisely continued Champlain as lieutenant governor, and
intrusted the management of colonial affairs in France to M. Dolu, a
gentleman of known zeal and probity. Champlain being hopeful that these
changes would favorably affect Canada, resolved now to establish his
family permanently in that country. Taking them with him, he sailed from
France in the above-named year, and arrived at Quebec in the end of May.
In passing by Tadoussac, he found that some adventurers of Rochelle had
opened a trade with the savages, in violation of the company's
privileges, and had given the fatal example of furnishing the hunters
with fire-arms in exchange for their peltries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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