glory of de Monts' dawning dream. Contemplating this 

 ruin and this baffled purpose, must we speak of failure? 

 If so, for de Monts personally the case is not singular. 

 All the first leaders had sad experiences. Gilbert, 

 Ealeigh, Gorges, de Monts, Poutrincourt, Champlain even, 

 and we might also say Columbus himself — jealousy, 

 enmity, imprisonment, disgrace barred their sunset sky. 

 But we judge men more by the ideas they quicken into 

 action than by the immediate material results they live 

 to see. 



All the developments of succeeding history in this re- 

 gion must be regarded as in some true sense the unfolding 

 of de Monts' purpose, not under his guidance indeed 

 but under the momentum of the impulse he originated, and 

 although we cannot see all the interaction of the com- 

 posite forces which determine life and history, we must 

 think back to de Monts, when we consider the long, sharp 

 struggle for possession of these iVcadian shores and the 

 tenacious hold on them which France maintained for 

 more than a century, and is not wholly yet unfelt. 



One singular dignity this St. Croix settlement of de 

 Monts has come to hold. After long lost identity and 

 earnest searching, these ruins were discovered and ad- 

 mitted to be the proper mark for the boundary line be- 

 tween two great nations, England and the United States 

 of Am^erica. Such value had this broken enterprise in 

 the minds of men and council of nations. Without the 

 identifying of this spot the language of treaties was in 

 vain, and the bounds of nationalities in confusion. 



But this little relic is not the measure of the man. The 

 narrow compass of this island does not bound his thought, 

 nor the dim fragments of his doing that have taken 

 earthly form around us compose his record. The meas- 

 ure of him is his purpose and ideal. 



The blood and brain of France that once led the civi- 

 lization of Europe has not perished from the earth. It 

 jias entered into the on-going of human welfare, and the 



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