From the East the course of our history leads us by rapid transition to the great continent of the West. The English claim to the sovereignty of North America dated from the reign¹ of Henry the Seventh, under whose patronage² Sebastian Cabot had made his great discoveries; but it was the Spaniards who first approached the unknown land and gave it the name of Florida, and it was a Frenchman, Denis of Honfleur, who first explored the Gulf³ of St. Lawrence. So also it was a Frenchman, Jacques Cartier, who gave its name to that noble river, and the name of Mount Royal or Montreal to the hill on which the city now stands. Full sixty years passed away before further attempt was made to found European settlements on the North American continent, and then English and French took the work in hand well-nigh simultaneously⁴. In 1603 De Monts obtained permission from the French king to colonise Acadia,[237] discovered and planted the harbour called by him Port Royal and by the English at a later date Annapolis Royal, and explored the coast southward as far as that Plymouth where the Pilgrim Fathers were to land in 1621. The attempt of De Monts was a failure, and it was left to Samuel Champlain to begin the work anew by the founding of Quebec and by the establishment of Montreal at once as a gateway⁵ for Indian trade and a bulwark⁶ against Indian invasion.[242] To him was due the exploration of the river Richelieu and of the lake which bears his name, as far as the two headlands which were afterwards to become famous under the names of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. In Champlain's wake followed the Jesuit missionaries⁷, whose history presents so curious a mixture of that which is highest and lowest in human nature. Lastly, to Champlain must be ascribed not only the final settlement of the French in Canada but the initiation⁸ of the French policy of

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