TO THE KING.

_Sire,

Your Majesty has doubtless full knowledge of the discoveries made in your
service in New France, called Canada, through the descriptions, given by
certain Captains and Pilots, of the voyages and discoveries made there
during the past eighty years. These, however, present nothing so honorable
to your Kingdom, or so profitable to the service of your Majesty and your
subjects, as will, I doubt not, the maps of the coasts, harbors, rivers,
and the situation of the places described in this little treatise, which I
make bold to address to your Majesty, and which is entitled a Journal of
Voyages and Discoveries, which I have made in connection with Sieur de
Monts, your Lieutenant in New France. This I do, feeling myself urged by a
just sense of the honor I have received during the last ten years in
commissions, not only, Sire, from your Majesty, but also from the late
king, Henry the Great, of happy memory, who commissioned me to make the
most exact researches and explorations in my power. This I have done, and
added, moreover, the maps contained in this little book, where I have set
forth in particular the dangers to which one would be liable. The subjects
of your Majesty, whom you may be pleased hereafter to employ for the
preservation of what has been discovered, will be able to avoid those
dangers through the knowledge afforded by the maps contained in this
treatise, which will serve as an example in your kingdom for increasing the
glory of your Majesty, the welfare of your subjects, and for the honor of
the very humble service, for which, to the happy prolongation of your days,
is indebted,