Champlain. Quebec, the Stadacona of Cartier, was decided on as the most
advantageous site for the projected settlement, the destined cradle of
the Canadian nation. There accordingly, Champlain unfurled the white
Banner on the 3rd of July, 1608. In the Algonquin tongue, "Kebec"
signifies a strait, the St. Lawrence flowing at this point in a narrow
channel between two high banks. The intended capital [Footnote: Quebec is
now considered the military capital of Canada, Montreal ranking as the
commercial metropolis, and Ottawa as the legislative.] of Canada could
not have been more judiciously located. It possesses a magnificent
harbour, navigable for the largest vessels, and capable of containing the
most numerous fleet. The great river at its base forms a commodious
highway of communication with the very heart of the continent, while in
consequence of the narrowing of the waters in its immediate vicinity, the
citadel commands the passage. Quebec is thus the key of the great valley
of the St. Lawrence, "the advanced guard," as the Abbe Ferland calls it
in his History of Canada, of the vast French empire, which, according to
the project of Louis XIV., was to extend from the Straits of Belle Isle
to the Gulf of Mexico. The colony was not, however, to be established on
a firm basis, until it had passed through much tribulation. Its early
annals were to record an ordeal of trials, sickness, privation, hardship,
destitution, alarms from the terrible Iroquois, molestation from the
English, and finally, all but total extinction. They were to tell how the
growth of the young nation had been checked, and its very existence
threatened, by the bad faith of self-interested companies; worse than
all, how, destined as it was for a bright star in the firmament of the
Church, and a beacon light to the benighted heathen, its grand end had
been temporarily frustrated by the frequent appointment of Calvinists for
its patrons, and a mingling of the same sectarians among its small
population. Then the page of triumph would come, and on it would be
inscribed, how, like its own flower-enamelled meadows, bursting into