administrative framework of France when her kings and
people turned their eyes westward across the seas. From
the rugged old Norman and Breton seaports courageous
mariners had been for a long time lengthening their
voyages to new coasts. As early as 1534 Jacques Cartier
of St Malo had made the first of his pilgrimages to the
St Lawrence, and in 1542 his associate Roberval had
attempted to plant a colony there. They had found the
shores of the great river to be inhospitable; the winters
were rigorous; no stores of mineral wealth had appeared;
nor did the land seem to possess great agricultural
possibilities. From Mexico the Spanish galleons were
bearing home their rich cargoes of silver bullion. In
Virginia the English navigators had found a land of fair
skies and fertile soil. But the hills and valleys of the
northland had shouted no such greeting to the voyageurs
of Brittany. Cartier had failed to make his landfall at
Utopia, and the balance-sheet of his achievements, when
cast up in 1544, had offered a princely dividend of
disappointment.

For a half-century following the abortive efforts of
Cartier and Roberval, the French authorities had made no
serious or successful attempt to plant a colony in the
New World. That is not surprising, for there were troubles
in plenty at home. Huguenots and Catholics were at each
other's throats; the wars of the Fronde convulsed the
land; and it was not till the very end of the sixteenth
century that the country settled down to peace within
its own borders. Some facetious chronicler has remarked