credentials empowering him to receive possession from
Lewis and Thomas Kirke, the representatives of England.
With De Caen came Paul Le Jeune and two other Jesuits,
a vanguard of the missionary band which was to convert
the savages. 'We cast anchor,' says Le Jeune, 'in front
of the fort which the English held; we saw at the foot
of this fort the poor settlement of Quebec all in ashes.
The English, who came to this country to plunder and not
to build up, not only burned a greater part of the detached
buildings which Father Charles Lalemant had erected, but
also all of that poor settlement of which nothing is now
to be seen but the ruins of its stone walls.'

The season of 1632 thus belonged to De Caen, whose function
was merely to tie up loose ends and prepare for the
establishment of the new regime. The central incident of
the recession was the return of Champlain himself--an
old man who had said a last farewell to France and now
came, as the king's lieutenant, to end his days in the
land of his labours and his hopes. If ever the oft-quoted
last lines of Tennyson's Ulysses could fitly be claimed
by a writer on behalf of his hero, they apply to Champlain
as he sailed from the harbour of Dieppe on March 23,
1633.

Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds