Pioneers of France in the New World | Page 5

themselves. Borne
down by numbers from without, wasted by corruption from within,
New France fell at last; and out of her fall grew revolutions whose
influence to this hour is felt through every nation of the civilized world.
The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its
departed shades, they rise upon us from their graves in strange,
romantic guise. Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the
fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest,
mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on
the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed
continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval
sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling
with the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for
Civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests,
priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men
steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister,
here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with
a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of
death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching
ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest
sons of toil.
This memorable but half-forgotten chapter in the book of human life
can be rightly read only by lights numerous and widely scattered. The
earlier period of New France was prolific in a class of publications
which are often of much historic value, but of which many are
exceedingly rare. The writer, however, has at length gained access to
them all. Of the unpublished records of the colonies, the archives of
France are of course the grand deposit; but many documents of
important bearing on the subject are to be found scattered in public and

private libraries, chiefly in France and Canada. The task of collection
has proved abundantly irksome and laborious. It has, however, been
greatly lightened by the action of the governments of New York,
Massachusetts, and Canada, in collecting from Europe copies of
documents having more or less relation to their own history. It has been
greatly lightened, too, by a most kind co-operation, for which the writer
owes obligations too many for recognition at present, but of which he
trusts to make fitting acknowledgment hereafter. Yet he cannot forbear
to mention the name of Mr. John Gilmary Shea of New York, to whose
labors this department of American history has been so deeply indebted,
and that of the Hon. Henry Black of Quebec. Nor can he refrain from
expressing his obligation to the skilful and friendly criticism of Mr.
Charles Folsom.
In this, and still more must it be the case in succeeding volumes, the
amount of reading applied to their composition is far greater than the
citations represent, much of it being of a collateral and illustrative
nature. This was essential to a plan whose aim it was, while
scrupulously and rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to animate
them with the life of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the
skeleton with flesh. If, at times, it may seem that range has been
allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details
of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal
observation.
Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research,
however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be
detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as
a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue
himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in
their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of
those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or
a spectator of the action he describes.
With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the
most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer's aim to
exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be
folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so
far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much
importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation

just alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any
means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.
To those who have aided him with information and documents, the
extreme slowness in the progress of the work will naturally have caused
surprise. This slowness was unavoidable. During the past eighteen
years,