which was the home of Champlain also who accompanied 

 him to the Acadian shores. Born of one of the most 

 ancient families of France, that had served the Crown 

 for centuries with credit and distinction, all accounts 

 agree in praise of him as a brave and gallant gentleman. 

 Champlain who later wrote the liistory of the enterprise 

 speaks of him ever in terms of warm regard, and states 

 that the King had "great confidence in him for his fidelity, 

 as he ever showed, even to his death — , " while the Jesuit 

 missionary Francis Xavier de Charlevoix, writing over 

 a century later, described him, though a Huguenot, as 

 "a most honorable man of upright views and zealous for 

 the State, who had every quality necessary for success 

 in the enterprise committed to liis charge." Court in- 

 trigues and powerful trading influences seeking to control 

 the valuable fur-trade rights which had been granted him 

 and his associates to meet the expense of new colonial 

 establishments on a yet savage coast, forested to the 

 water's edge, wrested at length his charter from him, to 

 be restored again, then lost again, till the assassination 

 of Henry IV, by a fanatic, on the 14th of May, 1610, in- 

 volved in a common ruin de Monts and the best interests 

 of France. 



The Jesuits took up in turn the work de Monts had left, 

 establishing a colony in 1613 at Mount Desert, the first 

 land touched on by Champlain within the limits of the 

 United States, when, in September, 1604, he sailed out from 

 its future boundary at the mouth of the St. Croix, where 

 de Monts was establishing his first colony, to explore 

 the neighboring coast. For a century after, till the peace 

 of Utrecht, France continued to liold the land it called 

 Acadia, a name which included until then the magnifi- 

 cently harbored coast of eastern Maine as well as Nova 

 Scotia and New Brunswick. 



Had France, moved by the spirit of Henry IV and de 

 Monts, made some present sacrifice to consolidate what 

 their and other early enterprise had won instead of plung- 



4 



