The only French occupation of the St. Lawrence was not of the kind to flourish. Sir William Alexander, in a tract which he published in 1624, to induce a more active immigration on the part of his countrymen to his province of New Scotland (Nova Scotia), accounts for the want of stability in the French colony in that they were "only desirous to know the nature and quality of the soil and did never seek to have (its products) in such quantity as was requisite for their maintenance, affecting more by making a needless ostentation that the world should know they had been there, more in love with glory than with virtue.... Being always subject to divisions among themselves it was impossible that they could subsist, which proceeded sometimes from emulation or envy, and at other times from the laziness of the disposition of some, who, loathing labor, would be commanded by none."[1] In 1660, after more than half a century after the first settlement, a census of Canada showed a total of 3418 souls, while the inhabitants of New England numbered at the same time not far from eighty thousand. The establishment of seigneuries was not calculated to invite or promote desirable immigration. A seigneurial title was given to any enterprising person who would undertake to plant settlers on the land, and accept in return a certain proportion of the grist, furs and fish which the occupant could procure by labor. Immigrants of the class which builds up a country want to own the land which they cultivate. The sense of independence inspires them with energy and with a patriotic interest in the commonwealth. Another peculiar feature of French colonization was the tendency to mingle with the natives. As early as 1635, Champlain told the Hurons, at his last Council in Quebec, that they only needed to embrace the white man's faith if they would have the white man take their daughters in marriage. The English principle was to drive out the savage when he could be driven out, or to tolerate him as a ward and an inferior when it would be unjust to expel or destroy him; the Frenchman embraced the Indian as a brother. "The French missionary," says Doyle in his Puritan colonies, "well nigh broke with civilization; he toned down all that was spiritual in his religion, and emphasized all that was sensual, till he had assimilated it to the wants of the savage. The better and worse features of Puritanism forbade a triumph won on such terms." One of the worst products of French colonial life was the class known as the "coureurs de bois," a lawless gang, half trader, half explorer, bent on divertisement, and not discouraged by misery or peril. They lived in a certain fashion to which the missionaries themselves were not averse, as Lemercier shows where he commends the priests of his order as being savages among savages. Charlevoix tells us that while the Indian did not become French, the Frenchman became a savage. Talon speaks of these vagabonds as living as