The scarcity of women in the Virginia colony has already been alluded to in connection with the marriage of Rolfe and Pocahontas. Of the early immigrants very few were women, and there could be no permanent colony without the home and family. The London Company, at the instance of their treasurer, Edwin Sandys, proposed, about twelve years after the first settlement, to send one hundred "pure and uncorrupt" young women to Virginia at the expense of the corporation, to be wives to the planters. Ninety were sent over in 1620. The shores were lined with young men waiting to see them land, and in a few days everyone of the fair immigrants had found a husband. Wives had to be paid for in tobacco--the currency of the colony--in order to recompense the company for the expense of importing them. The price of a wife was at first fixed at one hundred and twenty-five pounds of tobacco--equal to about $90--but afterward rose to $150. The women were disposed of on credit, when the suitor had not the cash, and the debt incurred for a wife was considered a debt of honor. Virginia became a colony of homes. The settlement was saved from becoming a refuge of the criminal and the outcast, and in the unions formed at that time many of the families in the country had their origin. That some of the refuse of English society floated into the colony is true, and many of the unruly children of London and other English towns, were sent there as apprentices. But the unruly street boy often has the diamond of energy and genius concealed within the rude exterior, and in the genial clime of Virginia, with an opportunity to be a man among men, the young apprentice from the slums of London or Plymouth proved himself to possess qualities of value to the community. CHAPTER III. The French in Canada--Champlain Attacks the Iroquois--Quebec a Military Post--Weak Efforts at Colonization--Fur-traders and Missionaries--The Foundation of New France--The French King Claims from the Upper Lakes to the Sea--Slow Growth of the French Colonies--Mixing with the Savages--The "Coureurs de Bois."