any Englishman before the end of the eighteenth century; and
although this is partly explained by the fact that the St.
Lawrence and the lakes afforded an easy approach to the interior,
while farther south the forest-clad ranges of the Alleghanies
constituted a very serious barrier, this does not diminish the
French pre-eminence in exploration. Nor can anything in the
history of European colonisation surpass the heroism of the French
missionaries among the Indians, who faced and endured incredible
tortures in order to bring Christianity to the barbarians. No
serious missionary enterprise was ever undertaken by the English
colonists; this difference was in part due to the fact that the
missionary aim was definitely encouraged by the home government in
France. From the outset, then, poverty, paucity of numbers,
gallantry, and missionary zeal formed marked features of the
French North American colonies.

In other respects they very clearly reproduced some of the
features of the motherland. Their organisation was strictly feudal
in character. The real unit of settlement and government was the
seigneurie, an estate owned by a Frenchman of birth, and
cultivated by his vassals, who found refuge from an Indian raid,
or other danger, in the stockaded house which took the place of a
chateau, much as their remote ancestors had taken refuge from the
raids of the Northmen in the castles of their seigneur's
ancestors. And over this feudal society was set, as in France, a
highly centralised government wielding despotic power, and in its
turn absolutely subject to the mandate of the Crown at home. This
despotic government had the right to require the services of all
its subjects in case of need; and it was only the centralised
government of the colony, and the warlike and adventurous