and that during fifteen years the company should defray
the expenses of public worship and support three
missionaries at each trading-post.

Now began the preparations on a great scale for the
colonization of New France. By the spring of 1628 a fleet
of eighteen or twenty ships belonging to the company
assembled in the harbour of Dieppe, laden deep with food,
building materials, implements, guns, and ammunition,
including about one hundred and fifty pieces of ordnance
for the forts at the trading-posts. Out into the English
Channel one bright April day this fleet swept, under the
command of Claude de Roquemont, one of the Associates.
On the decks of the ships were men and women looking
hopefully to the New World for fortune and happiness,
and Recollets and Jesuits going to a field at this time
deemed broad enough for the energies of both. Lalemant,
who early in 1627 had followed Noyrot to France, was now
returning to his mission with his hopes realized. A
Catholic empire could be built up in the New World, the
savages could be christianized, and the Iroquois, the
greatest menace of the colony, if they would not listen
to reason, could be subdued. The Dutch and the English
on the Atlantic seaboard could be kept within bounds;
possibly driven from the continent; then the whole of
North America would be French and Catholic. Thus, perhaps,
dreamed Lalemant and his companions, the Jesuit Paul
Ragueneau and the Recollets Daniel Boursier and Francois
Girard, as they paced the deck of the vessel that bore
them westward.