XXX ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



task. They must be men of vision and men of will, men understanding the pos- 

 sibilities of the far future, and yet equally wise to use the opportunities of the present. 

 The founding of the new world was not the mere drift of a surplus population to new 

 lands where food was more abundant and the conditions of life more easy. It was 

 the going forth of bold adventurous spirits to conquer the unknown, and only the 

 strongest and best were adequate to the task. It was not submerged slums or crim- 

 inal courts that furnished the material for the founding of this continent. 



And a wonderful age, an age that for two hundred years furnished in Western 

 Europe such a galaxy of talent as was only equalled by Greece in her palmiest days, 

 furnished also the men for this the greatest work of all that time. A Cortez, a Cartier, 

 a Cabot, a Champlain, a Maisonneuve, a Gilbert, a Raleigh, a Penn, a Hudson, 

 the Pilgrim Fathers, these are some of the names which glorified the centuries by 

 their deeds. To be bom in such an age, for a man was fortunate, for a nation was 

 glorious. 



Among the noblest spirits bred and trained in that age was Champlain. He 

 first saw the light in the little seaport town of Brouage on the shores of the stormy 

 Bay of Biscay, about the year 1567. The sea has ever been the nurse of great men 

 and Champlain was bom by the sea, of a family of seafaring people, his father a 

 captain of marine. From a child he was accustomed to battle with the wind and 

 the waves, and with firm and intelhgent courage to commit himself to the unknown 

 perils of the deep. This maritime world into which Champlain was bom was at 

 this time the arena of the world's most stirring enterprise. The impetus given by 

 the work of Columbus had stirred the thoughts and common talk of every seaport 

 town in all Europe, and was firing the heart of every sailor with ambition to win 

 like glory for himself. It is out of such a condition of vibrating new life that the finest, 

 strongest spirits are brought forth to lead the world's chaotic unrest to great and 

 useful action. Such a leader, combining in himself in rich abundance the rarest 

 elements of success, was Champlain. 



As he arrived at the maturity of young manhood, Spain was still the foremost 

 of the nations in the work of exploration and in her grasp of the rich territories be- 

 yond the seas. So, under the banners of Spain, Champlain enlisted to serve his 

 apprenticeship as an explorer. The two years spent amid the luxuriance of the 

 tropics made him familiar both with the wealth and with the disadvantages of south- 

 em lands, and called into exercise his wonderful discernment of natural possibilities. 



But the most important result of these two years was to stimulate the eagerness 

 of his spirit to secure for his own loved country something of that expanse of terri- 

 tory which lay ready for appropriation. To this end he early tendered his services 

 to his own sovereign, and in two successive voyages explored the coast of New Eng- 

 land from Massachusetts Bay to Acadia, and made his preliminary visit to the 

 River St. Lawrence. All this we may regard as his preparation for, and introduction 

 to, the great work of his life. Of this preHminary work he has left us rich records 

 which evince already a habit of careful and discriminating observation, of accurate 

 record of everything worthy of note, and of a practical judgment and common 

 sense which grasp at once the possibilities and utilities which offer themselves in 

 nature all around him. All these rare gifts he brought to bear on the supreme 

 work of his life the founding of a great northern nation on the continent of North 

 America. In no one thing are these qualities of the man more manifest than in 

 the choice of Canada as the future field of his work. He chose not the sunny south 

 with its lazy, enervating wealth, nor the middle temperate zone with its sandy 

 coasts, but the great St. Lawrence with its magnificent waterway, its refreshing 

 breezes and its heavily timbered and fertile banks. And had Britain held fast the 

 empire which he founded, it would have included also the other great river valley 



