This consideration is certainly powerful, and ought to inspire all our sentiments with admiration, [xi] keeping us in pious fear, and in loving desire to benevolently impart this highest of all the blessings of Christianity, which comes to us so gratuitously and of its own accord. For otherwise it is certainly easy for our kind Father to cross his hands as did Jacob, and put his right upon the younger, and his left upon the elder. Oh, my God! where is here the ambition of the Great? where, the contention of the strong? where, the display of the rich? where, the endeavor of the virtuous? is there a field of Marathon, or are there Olympian games, more fitting to the brave? Where can the glory of a Christian more successfully ennoble him, than there where it brings both bodily and spiritual happiness to his brethren; and where, as one of God's great instruments, he would make a Garden out of the wilderness; where [xii] he would subjugate satanic Monsters, and would introduce the order and discipline of heaven upon earth; where generations upon generations, by thousands and to the remotest ages, would forever bless his name and memory, and heaven itself (which would be peopled by his good deeds) would rejoice at the thanksgivings and blessings bestowed upon him. Or c'est (amy Lecteur) l'ardent desir, & zele de voir ceste nouuelle France, que ie dy, cõquise à nostre Seigneur: qui m'a fait prendre la plume en main pour vous depeindre briefuement, & en toute verité ce que i'ay recogneu de ses cõtrées. Il y a quatre ans, que i'y fus enuoyé pas mes Superieurs: &, Dieu punissant mes pechez, i'en ay esté despuis enleué par les Anglois, ainsi que ie raconteray cy-apres. Now (dear Reader) it is this my eagerness and ardent desire to see this new France converted to our Lord, which has made me take my pen in hand to describe to you briefly, and in all truth, what I have found out about these lands. It is four years since I was sent there by my Superiors; and, as God's punishment for my sins, I was taken away from there by the English, as I shall relate hereafter. Relation de la Novvelle France, et le Voyage des Peres Iesvites en icelle. CHAPITRE I. [1] QUEL PAÏS EST LA NOUUELLE FRANCE, & CEUX QUI PREMIEREMENT L'ONT VOULU HABITER.