Mother ... your children, our fathers and predecessors, have of old been
masters of the sea.... They have with great power occupied Asia.... They
have carried the arms and the name of France to the east and south.... All
these are marks of your greatness, ... but you must now enter again upon
old paths, in so far as they have been abandoned, and expand the bounds of
your piety, justice and humanity, by teaching these things to the nations
of New France.... Our ancient practice of the sea must be revived, we must
ally the east with the west and convert those people to God before the end
of the world come.... You must make an alliance in imitation of the course
of the sun, for as he daily carries his light hence to New France, so let
your civilization, your light, be carried thither by your children, who
henceforth, by the frequent voyages they shall make to these western
lands, shall be called children of the sea, which is, being interpreted,
children of the west." [Footnote: Lescarbot, "Histoire de la Nouvelle
France," 1618, pp. 15-22.]

"Children of the west." His fervid appeal found as little response then as
doubtless it would find if made to-day, and the children of the sea were
interpreted as the children of the south of Africa. The sons of France
have ever loved their homes. They have, except the adventurous few,
preferred to remain children of the rivers and the sea of their fathers,
and so it is that few of Gallic blood were "spawned," to use Lescarbot's
metaphor, in that chill continent, though the venturing or missionary
spirit of such as Cartier and Champlain, Poutrincourt and De Monts gave
spawn of such heroism and unselfish sacrifice as have made millions in
America whom we now call "children of the west," geographical offspring of
Brittany and Normandy and Picardy.

The lilies of France and the escutcheons of De Monts and Poutrincourt,
painted by Lescarbot for the castle in the wilderness, faded; the sea