There is so much of tragic suffering and gloom in all this epic of the
forests that one is tempted to spend more time than one ought, perhaps, on
that bit of European clearing (the only spot, save one, as yet in all the
continent north of Florida and Mexico), in the jolly companionship of that
young poet-lawyer who had doubtless sat under lecturers in Paris and who
would certainly have been quite as capable and entertaining as any
lecturers on the new world brought in these later days from America to
Paris, a man "who won the good-will of all and spared himself naught,"
"who daily invented something for the public good," and who gave the
strongest proof of what advantage "a new settlement might derive from a
mind cultivated by study and induced by patriotism to use its knowledge
and reflections."

It cannot seem unworthy of the serious purpose of this book to let the
continent lie a few minutes longer in its savage slumber, or, as the
Jesuits thought it, "blasted beneath the sceptre of hell," while we
accompany Poutrincourt and Champlain, returning wounded and weather-beaten
from inspecting the coast of New England, to find the buildings of Port
Royal, under Lescarbot's care, bright with lights, and an improvised arch
bearing the arms of Poutrincourt and De Monts, to be received by Neptune,
who, accompanied by a retinue of Tritons, declaimed Alexandrine couplets
of praise and welcome, and to sit at the sumptuous table of the Order of
Good Times, of which I have just spoken, furnished by this same lawyer-
poet's agricultural industry. We may even stop a moment longer to hear his
stately appeal to France, which, heeded by her, would have made
Lescarbot's a name familiar in the homes of America instead of one known
only to those who delve in libraries:

"France, fair eye of the universe, nurse from old of letters and of arms,
resource to the afflicted, strong stay to the Christian religion, Dear