CHAPTER II. 



1672-1675. 



FRONTENAC AT QUEBEC. 



Arrival. — Bright Prospects. — The Three Estates of New 

 France. — Speech of the Governor. — His Innovations. — 

 Royal Displeasure. — Signs of Storm. — Frontenac and the 

 Priests. — His Attempts to civilize the Indians. — Opposi- 

 tion. — Complaints and Heart-burnings. 



Frontenac was fifty-two years old when he 

 landed at Quebec. If time had done little to cure 

 his many faults, it had done nothing to weaken the 

 springs of his unconquerable vitality. In his ripe 

 middle age, he was as keen, fiery, and perversely 

 headstrong as when he quarrelled with Prefon- 

 taine in the hall at St. Fargeau. 



Had nature disposed him to melancholy, there 

 was much in his position to awaken it. A man of 

 courts and camps, born and bred in the focus of a 

 most gorgeous civilization, he was banished to the 

 ends of the earth, among savage hordes and half- 

 reclaimed forests, to exchange the splendors of St. 

 Germain and the dawning glories of Versailles for 

 a stern gray rock, haunted by sombre priests, 

 rugged merchants and traders, blanketed Indians, 

 and wild bush-rangers. But Frontenac was a man 

 of action. He wasted no time in vain regrets, and 



