40 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



the Iroquois, or a.gainst " our natural enemies those ambitious English 

 of New York." 



Never was more anxious care and supervision expended over an only 

 child ! 



For her .part England allowed her infants to grow up without over- 

 much supervision. Royal governors were sent out, more or less adequa- 

 tely supplied with means to carry out the system of the moment. But the 

 mother country gave to her children no practical help or support. Her 

 hantlings paddled about in water, hot or cold as they found it, and 

 though in America they finally broke away from the maternal swaddling- 

 bands yet they developed into a continent of English-speaking, English- 

 thinking folk. 



France was too anxious, too " motherly " to allow her children to 

 Malk alone, and as a result her name has disappeared from the map of 

 North America; the one survival of her dream of empire remains only 

 in the vague tradition of a peasantry bound in honourable loyalty to her 

 old enemy. 



France had great dreams for America, for " New France." The 

 sj)irit of adventure and conquest was a birthright common to all her 

 sons. She sought again a " Nouvelle France " in the New World as she 

 had in her struggle against the Eastern Empire in the Old. 



Think of her pretensions ! She had Canada and the St. Lawrence. 

 She had Louisiana and the Mississippi. England had a narrow strip 

 down the Atlantic coast between French Canada on the north and Span- 

 ish Florida on the south ; the Alleghanies served as a western boundary 

 wliich her colonists never reached during the first century of their occu- 

 pation, and to the east was the sea, a barrier and yet a tie to " Home." 



Quebec in Frontenac's day held about 1,345 souls. Three Rivers 150, 

 and Montreal 1,418. Westward from Montreal there were Forts Fron- 

 tenac, Niagara and Detroit, besides some less important ones towards 

 the north. 



From Detroit down to the present New Orleans there were cer- 

 tainly not more than one hundred and fifty Frenchmen to hold this 

 " New France " for His Most Christian Majesty. This force was dis- 

 tributed in about ten forts, or, more properly speaking stockaded posts, 

 scattered along at various points between Detroit and the mouth of the 

 Mississippi. The garrison of each, if complete, woiuld consist of the 

 commandant, bis lieutenant, a storekeeper, a sergeant and ten soldiers — 

 say from twelve to fifteen men in each. 



On its face the situation seems absurd, but Frontenac never 

 dreamed of holding the country by means of the scanty help sent by the 



