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FRANCE

ANCE was not slow to profit by the discoveries of Columbus. As early as 1504 the fishermen of Normandy and Brittany began to ply their vocation on the banks of Newfoundland. A map of the Gulf of St. Lawrence was drawn by a Frenchman in the year 1506. Two years later some Indians were taken to France; and in 1518 the attention of Francis I. was turned to the colonization of the New World. Five years 222 afterward a voyage of discovery and exploration was planned, and JOHN VERRAZZANI, a native of Florence, was commissioned to conduct the expedition. The special object had in view was to discover a north-west passage to Asia.

In the month of January, 1524, Verrazzani left the shores of Europe. His fleet consisted at first of four vessels; but three of them were damaged in a storm, and the voyage was undertaken with a single ship, called the Dolphin. For fifty days, through the buffetings of tempestuous weather, the courageous mariner held on his course, and on the 7th day of March discovered the main land in the latitude of Wilmington. He first sailed southward a hundred and fifty miles in the hope of finding a harbor, but found none. Returning northward, he finally anchored somewhere along the low sandy beach which stretches between the mouth of Cape Fear River and Pamlico Sound. Here he began a traffic with the natives. The Indians of this neighborhood were found to be a gentle and timid sort of creatures, unsuspicious and confiding. A half-drowned sailor who was washed ashore by the surf was treated with great kindness, and as soon as opportunity offered, permitted to return to the ship.

After a few days the voyage was continued toward the north. The whole coast of New Jersey was explored, and the hills marked as containing minerals. The harbor of New York was entered, and its safe and spacious waters were noted with admiration. At Newport, Rhode Island, Verrazzani anchored for fifteen days, and a trade was again opened with the Indians. Before leaving the place the French sailors repaid the confidence of the natives by kidnapping a child and attempting to steal a defenceless Indian girl.

Sailing from Newport, Verrazzani continued his explorations north

ward. The long and broken line of the New England coast was traced with considerable care. The Indians of the north were wary and suspicious. They would buy neither ornaments nor toys, but were eager to purchase knives and weapons of iron. Passing to the east of Nova Scotia, the bold navigator reached Newfoundland in the latter part of. May. In July he returned to France and published an account, still ex-✔ tant, of his great discoveries. The name of New France was now given to the whole country whose sea-coast had been traced by the adventurous crew of the Dolphin.

Such was the distracted condition of France at this time, that another expedition was not planned for a period of ten years. In 1534, however, Chabot, admiral of the kingdom, selected JAMES CARTIER, a 199 seaman of St. Malo, in Brittany, to make a new voyage to America. Two ships were fitted out for the enterprise, and after no more than twenty days of sailing under cloudless skies anchored on the 10th day of May off the coast of Newfoundland. Before the middle of July, Cartier had circumnavigated the island to the northward, crossed the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the south of Anticosti, and entered the Bay of Chaleurs. Not finding, as he had hoped, a passage out of this bay westward, he changed his course to the north again, and ascended the coast as far as Gaspé Bay. Here, upon a point of land, he set up a cross bearing a shield with the lily of France, and proclaimed the French king monarch of the country. Pressing his way still farther northward, and then westward, he entered the St. Lawrence, and ascended the broad estuary until the narrowing banks made him aware that he was in the mouth of a river. Cartier, thinking it impracticable to pass the winter in the New World, now turned his prows toward France, and in thirty days anchored his ships in the harbor of St. Malo.

So great was the fame of Cartier's first voyage that another was planned immediately. Three good ships were provided, and quite a number of young noblemen joined the expedition. Colonization rather than discovery was now the inspiring motive. The sails were set by zealous and excited crews, and on the 19th of May the new voyage was begun, 153 This time there was stormy weather, yet the passage to Newfoundland was made by the 10th of August. It was the day of St. Lawrence, and the name of that martyr was accordingly given to the gulf, and afterward to the noble stream which enters it from the west. Sailing northward around Anticosti, the expedition proceeded up the river to the island of Orleans, where the ships were moored in a place of safety. Two Indians whom Cartier had taken with him to France in the previous year now gave information that higher up the river there was an important

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town on the island of Hochelaga. Proceeding thither in his boats, the French captain found it as the Indians had said. A beautiful village lay there at the foot of a high hill in the middle of the island. Climbing to the top of the hill, Cartier, as suggested by the scene around him, named the island and town Mont-Real. The country was declared to belong by right of discovery to the king of France; and then the boats dropped down the river to the ships. During this winter twenty-five of Cartier's men were swept off by the scurvy, a malady hitherto unknown in Europe. With the opening of spring, preparations were made to return to France. The terrible winter had proved too much for French enthusiasm. The emblem of Catholicism, bearing the arms of France, was again planted in the soil of the New World, and the homeward voyage began; but before the ships had left their anchorage, the kindly king of the Hurons, who had treated Cartier with so much generosity, was decoyed on board and carried off to die. On the 6th day of July the fleet reached St. Malo in safety; but by the accounts which Cartier published on his return the French were greatly discouraged. Neither silver nor gold had been found on the banks of the St. Lawrence; and what was a new world good for that had not silver and gold?

Francis of La Roque, lord of ROBERVAL, in Picardy, was the next to undertake the colonization of the countries discovered by the French. This nobleman, four years after Cartier's return from his second voyage, was commissioned by the court of France to plant a colony on the St. Lawrence. The titles of viceroy and lieutenant-general of New France were conferred upon him, and much other vainglorious ceremony attended his preparations for departure. The man, however, who was chiefly relied on to give character and direction to the proposed colony was no other than James Cartier. He only seemed competent to conduct the enterprise with any promise of success. His name was accordingly added to the list, and he was honored with the office of chief pilot and captaingeneral of the expedition.

The next thing to be done was to find material for the colony. This was a difficult task. The French peasants and mechanics were not eager to embark for a country which promised nothing better than savages and snow. Cartier's honest narrative about the resources of New France had left no room for further dreaming. So the work of enlisting volunteers went on slowly, until the government adopted the plan of opening the prisons of the kingdom and giving freedom to whoever would join the expedition. There was a rush of robbers, swindlers and murderers, and the lists were immediately filled. Only counterfeiters and traitors were denied the privilege of gaining their liberty in the New World.

In the latter part of May, 1541, five ships, under the immediate command of Cartier, left France, and soon reached the St. Lawrence. The expedition proceeded up the river to the present site of Quebec, where a fort was erected and named Charlesbourg. Here the colonists passed the winter. Cartier, offended because of the subordinate position which he held, was sullen and gloomy, and made no effort to prosecute discoveries which could benefit no one but the ambitious Roberval. The two leaders never acted in concert; and when La Roque, in June of the following year, arrived with immigrants and supplies, Cartier secretly sailed away with his part of the squadron, and returned to Europe. Roberval was left in New France with three shiploads of criminals who could only be restrained by whipping and hanging. During the autumn some feeble efforts were made to discover a northern passage; the winter was long and severe, and spring was welcomed by the colonists chiefly for the opportunity which it gave them of returning to France. The enterprise undertaken with so much pomp had resulted in nothing. In the year 1549 Roberval, with a large company of emigrants, sailed on a second voyage, but the fleet was never heard of afterward.

A period of fifty years now elapsed before the French authorities again attempted to colonize America. Meanwhile, private enterprise.. and religious persecution had co-operated in an effort to accomplish in Florida and Carolina what the government had failed to accomplish on the St. Lawrence. About the middle of the sixteenth century Coligni, the Protestant admiral of France, formed the design of establishing in America a refuge for the persecuted Huguenots of his own country. In 1562 this liberal and influential minister obtained from the sovereign,~Charles IX., the coveted privilege of planting a colony of Protestants in the New World. JOHN RIBAULT of Dieppe, a brave and experienced sailor, was selected to lead the Huguenots to the land of promise. Sailing in February, the company reached the coast of Florida at a point where three years later St. Augustine was founded. The River St. John's, called by the Spaniards the St. Matthew, was entered by the French and named the River of May. The vessels then continued northward along the coast until they came to the entrance of Port Royal; here it was determined to make the settlement. The colonists were landed on an island, and a stone engraved with the arms of their native land was set up to mark the place. A fort was erected, and in honor of Charles IX. named Carolina-a name which a century afterward was retained by the English and applied to the whole country from the Savannah River to the southern boundary of Virginia. In this fort Ribault left twenty-six men to keep possession, and then sailed back to France for additional

emigrants and stores. But civil war was now raging in the kingdom, and it was quite impossible to procure either supplies or colonists. No reinforcements were sent to Carolina, and in the following spring the men in the fort, discouraged with long waiting, grew mutinous, and killed their leader for attempting to control them. Then they constructed a rude brig and put to sea. After they had been driven about by the winds for a long time, they were picked up half starved by an English ship and carried to the coast of France.

Coligni did not yet despair of success in what he had undertaken. Two years after the first attempt another colony was planned, and LAUDONNIERE chosen leader. The character, however, of this second Protestant company was very bad. Many of them were abandoned men, of little industry and no prudence. The harbor of Port Royal was now shunned by the Huguenots, and a point on the River St. John's about fifteen miles west of where St. Augustine now stands was selected for the settlement. A fort was built here, and things were going well until a part of the colonists, under the pretext of escaping from famine, contrived to get away with two of the ships. Instead of returning to France, as they had promised, they began to practice piracy in the adjacent seas, until they were caught, brought back and justly hanged. The rest of the settlers, improvident and dissatisfied, were on the eve of breaking up the colony, when Ribault arrived with supplies of every sort, and restored order and content. It was at this time that the Spaniard Melendez, as already narrated, discovered the whereabouts of the Huguenots, and murdered the entire company.

It remained for DOMINIC DE GOURGES, a soldier of Gascony, to visit the Spaniards of St. Augustine with signal vengeance. This man fitted out three ships, mostly with his own means, and with only fifty daring seamen on board arrived in mid-winter on the coast of Florida. With this handful of soldiers he surprised successively three Spanish forts on the St. John's, and made prisoners of the inmates. Then, when he was unable to hold his position any longer, he hanged his leading captives to the branches of the trees, and put up this inscription to explain what he had done: "Not Spaniards, but murderers."

In the year 1598 the attention of the government of France was once more directed to the claims which French discovery had established in America. The MARQUIS OF LA ROCHE, a nobleman of influence and distinction, now obtained a commission authorizing him to found an empire in the New World. The prisons of France were again opened to furnish the emigrants, and the colony was soon made up. Crossing the Atlantic by the usual route, the vessels reached the coast of Nova Scotia, and