anchored at Sable Island. A more dismal place could not have been found between Labrador and Mexico; yet here, on this desolate island, La Roche left forty men to form a settlement, while he himself, under the pretext of procuring more men and supplies, returned to France. Shortly after his arrival in that country he died; and for seven dreary years the new French empire, composed of forty criminals, languished on Sable Island. Then they were mercifully picked up by some passing ships and carried back to France. Their punishment had been enough, and they were never remanded to prison. But the time had now come when a colony of Frenchmen should actually be established in America. In the year 1603 the sovereignty of the country from the latitude of Philadelphia to one degree north of Montreal was granted to DE MONTS. The items of chief importance in the patent which he received from the king were a monopoly of the furtrade of the new country and religious freedom for Huguenot immigrants. De Monts, with two shiploads of colonists, left France early in March of 1604, and after a pleasant voyage reached the Bay of Fundy. The summer was spent in making explorations and in trafficking with the natives. De Monts seems to have been uncertain as to where he should plant his colony; but while in this frame of mind, Poutrincourt, the captain of one of the ships, being greatly pleased with a harbor which he had discovered on the north-west coast of Nova Scotia, asked and obtained a grant of the same, together with some beautiful lands adjacent, and he and a part of the crew went on shore. De Monts, with the rest of the colony, crossed to the west side of the bay, and began to build a fort on an island at the mouth of the St. Croix River. But in the following spring they abandoned this place, and returned to the harbor which had been granted to Poutrincourt. Here, on the 14th day of November, 1605, the foundations of the first permanent French settlement in America were laid. The name of Port Royal was given to the harbor and the fort, and the whole country, including Nova Scotia, the surrounding islands and the main land as far south as the St. Croix River, was called ACADIA. Two years before the settlement was made at Port Royal, SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN, one of the most eminent and soldierly men of his times, was commissioned by a company of Rouen merchants to explore the country of the St. Lawrence and establish a trading-post. The traders saw that a traffic in the furs which those regions so abundantly supplied was a surer road to riches than rambling about in search of gold and diamonds. Under this commission, Champlain crossed the ocean, entered the gulf, sailed up the river, and with remarkable prudence and good judgment selected the spot on which Quebec now stands as the site for a fort. In the 16631 autumn of 1603, he returned to France, and published an interesting and faithful account of his expedition. In the year 1608, Champlain again visited America, and on the 3d of July in that year the foundations of Quebec were laid. In the following year he and two other Frenchmen joined a company of Huron and Algonquin Indians who were at war with the Iroquois of New York. While marching with this party of warriors, he ascended the Sorel River until he came to the long, narrow lake which he was the first white man to look upon, and which has ever since borne the name of its discoverer. Champlain was a religious enthusiast, and on that account the development of his colony was for some time hindered. In 1612 the Protestant party came into power in France, and the great Condé, the protector of the Protestants, became viceroy of the French empire in America. Now, for the third time, Champlain came to New France, and the success of the colony at Quebec was fully assured. Franciscan monks came over and began to preach among the Indians. These friars and the Protestants quarreled a good deal, and the settlement was much disturbed. A second time Champlain went with a warparty against the Iroquois. His company was defeated, he himself wounded and obliged to remain all winter among the Hurons; but in the summer of 1617 he returned to the colony, in 1620 began to build, and four years afterward completed, the strong fortress of St. Louis. When the heavy bastions of this castle appeared on the high cliff above the town and river, the permanence of the French settlements in the valley of the St. Lawrence was no longer doubtful. To Samuel Champlain, more than to any other man-more than to the French government itself-the success of the North American colonies of France must be attributed. No ENGLISH DISCOVERIES AND SETTLEMENTS. day in the early history of the New World was more important than the 5th of May, 1496. On that day Henry VII., king of England, signed the commission of JOHN CABOT of Venice to make discoveries and explorations in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, to carry the English flag, and to take possession of all islands and continents which he might discover. Cabot was a brave, adventurous man who had been a |