98 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
French, and set up another, bearing the name of King James the 
First of England, for whom he took possession of the whole territory 
of Acadia. Thence he proceeded to St. Croix, where he destroyed the 
settlement of De Monts; and finally to Port Royal which he burned, 
reducing to ashes in two hours what it had cost France 200,000 crowns 
in money and many years of ceaseless toil and enterprise on the part 
of her bravest pioneers and adventurers to establish. Having thus 
valiantly and successfully vindicated the paramount right of Great 
Britain to the possession of Acadia, Captain Argall returned to Vir- 
ginia. 
It is stated that Acadia was the favourite colony of King Henry 
the Fourth of France, but he appears to have borne the blow inflicted 
upon it by Argall, with considerable philosophy, no representations 
whatever on the subject being made to England, whose claim to Acadia 
was thus tacitly acknowledged by France. 
The King of Great Britain now began to consider the future of 
his vast possessions across the Atlantic. With a perspicuity and fore- 
sight equal to that of his ancestor, King Henry the Seventh, His Ma- 
jesty conceived the idea of colonizing Acadia with subjects from his 
northern Kingdom. From this it was to take its new name, forming 
an appanage thereof and standing to it in a relation similar to that 
held by New England towards his southern Realm. 
“The colonial policy of James I. had in it much of the paternal, as 
was to be expected in days when the rights of kings were considered div- 
ine, but it was also eminently shrewd, far-seeing and commercial. To per- 
suade men to quit their homes, however poor and rough these homes 
might be, was, in the beginning of the seventeenth century a very differ- 
ent thing from what itis now. In these days no eloquence is needed to 
induce men to quit the companionship, in crowded cities, of disease 
and discomfort, and crime, or to abandon rack-rented holdings in an 
uncertain climate for cheap freeholds of virgin soil in a land where the 
colder winter is compensated by regularity of seasons, bluer skies, and 
increased warmth in summer and autumn. In these days also the in- 
dividual emigrant is common; the throbbing steamer carries in its 
hull many hundreds of self-contained men, each confident of carving 
out his fortune independently of his neighbours. In the reign of 
James I. such an emigrant was unknown : there were farmers, but they 
were also soldiers of fortune. The figuratively mailed hand had to 
seize the land, before the naked hand could till in safety.” 17, 
And who could be found better fitted to take command of these 
bands of adventurous emigrants than their own ancient Chieftains, 
to whom His Majesty designed not only to grant Baronies of vast area 
