Various motives influenced the men who sought to establish French colonization in America. The ill-fated agricultural colony of the Huguenots in Florida (1562-68), was avowedly an attempt of Admiral Coligny to found an enduring asylum for French Protestants. The enterprise of New France, on the other hand, was the outgrowth of interests more or less conflicting. Doubtless the court had deepest at heart the kingly passion for territorial aggrandizement; next uppermost, was the pious wish to convert heathen nations to the Catholic faith, explorers like Cartier being authorized to discover new lands "in order the better to do what is pleasing to God, our Creator and Redeemer, and what may be for the increase of his holy and sacred name, and of our holy mother, the Church;" the desire for pelf, through the agency of the fur trade, and the possibility of the discovery of precious metals, gave commercial zest to the undertaking, and to many was the _raison d'être_ of the colony; and lastly, was the almost universal yearning for adventure, among a people who in the seventeenth century were still imbued with that chivalric temper which among Englishmen is assigned to the Middle Ages. The inner life of New France, throughout its century and a half of existence, was largely a warring between these several interests. Missionaries came early upon the scene. With the Calvinist De Monts were Huguenot ministers for the benefit of the settlers, and Catholic priests to open a mission among the savages, for the court had stipulated with him that the latter were to be instructed only in the faith of Rome. But no missionary work was done, for the colony was through several years on the verge of dissolution, and the priests became victims of scurvy. Poutrincourt, who held under De Monts the patent for Port Royal, did nothing to further the purposes of the court in this regard, until 1610, when, admonished for his neglect, he brought out with him a secular priest, Messire Jessé Fléché, of Langres, who on June 24, "apparently in some haste," baptized twenty-one Abenakis, including the district sagamore, or chief. The account of this affair, which Poutrincourt sent in triumph to France, is the initial document in the present series.