A Frenchman by the name of Champlain sailed up the beautiful river St. Lawrence, and was so charmed with the scenery of the country that in 1608, the year after Jamestown was settled, he began to plant a colony on the site of what is now Quebec. The settlement soon became a city and the capital of the French possessions in America. The French were also the first explorers of the vast interior regions of our country. Their fur traders and trappers kept on good terms with the Indians, and slowly pushed along the shores of the Great Lakes until they had established a chain of trading-posts from the St. Lawrence to Lake Superior. About the time of King Philip's War in New England Father Marquette discovered the upper Mississippi, and floated down this great river nearly as far as the mouth of the Arkansas. =104. La Salle floats down the Mighty Mississippi.=--The bravest and ablest of all the French explorers was a fur-trader by the name of La Salle. This daring man, whose life was filled with romantic adventures and hardships, bravely undergone, gave France the right to claim as her own the vast domain of the Mississippi valley. On Lake Erie, La Salle built a small vessel, in which he sailed to the westward over the Great Lakes. In the year 1682, with a few companions, he floated down the mighty Mississippi until he reached the Gulf of Mexico. [Illustration: LA SALLE AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI.] With solemn ceremonies he claimed for France all the country drained by this great river and its branches. This enormous territory, extending from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, he named Louisiana in honor of his king, Louis XIV. The narrow strip of land held by the English along the Atlantic seaboard seemed a feeble possession compared with the vast untrodden wilderness known as "New France." Hand in hand with the French explorers and fur-traders, and often in advance of them, went the Jesuit missionaries. In their efforts to carry their religion to the Indians and convert them to their faith, these zealous men boldly struck out into the unbroken wilderness of the great West. They often became brave and intelligent explorers. All hardships and all dangers, and even torture by the Indians, they endured without a murmur. =105. Beginning of the Contests between the French and English Colonists.=--At the time the French and English were making settlements on this continent, and for many long and weary years, with very short intervals of rest, Europe was cursed with war. Whether these cruel strifes between the nations arose from political ambition, greed for gain, or common jealousy, there was always intermingled the same old undercurrent of religious hatred. The French settlers in this country were Roman Catholics, while the English were almost all Protestants. Hence it is not strange that these bitter religious controversies were not confined to the Old World, but stained with blood the soil of the New.