The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its
departed shades, they rise upon us from their graves in strange,
romantic guise. Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the
fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest,
mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on
the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed
continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval
sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with
the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for Civilization.
Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments
in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique
learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the
noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild,
parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men
of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry,
here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of
toil.

This memorable but half-forgotten chapter in the book of human life can
be rightly read only by lights numerous and widely scattered. The
earlier period of New France was prolific in a class of publications
which are often of much historic value, but of which many are
exceedingly rare. The writer, however, has at length gained access to
them all. Of the unpublished records of the colonies, the archives of
France are of course the grand deposit; but many documents of important
bearing on the subject are to be found scattered in public and private
libraries, chiefly in France and Canada. The task of collection has
proved abundantly irksome and laborious. It has, however, been greatly
lightened by the action of the governments of New York, Massachusetts,
and Canada, in collecting from Europe copies of documents having more or