There should be written in further preface to all the chapters which
follow a paragraph from the beloved historian to whom I am most indebted
and of whom I shall speak later at length. I first read its entrancing
sentences when a youth in college, a quarter of a century ago, and I have
never been free of its spell. I would have it written not only in France
but somewhere at the northern portals of the American continent, on the
cliffs of the Saguenay, or on that Rock of Quebec which saw the first
vessel of the French come up the river and supported the last struggle for
formal dominion of a land which the French can never lose, _except by
forgetting_: "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." [Footnote: Parkman: "Pioneers of France
in the New World." New library edition. Introduction, xii-xiii.]

These are the regions we are to explore, and these are the men with whom
we are to begin the journey.