Indian
Massacres Became So Frequent, So Appalling, That On Several Occasions The
French Thought Seriously Of Giving Up The Colony Forever.
The rivalry
between France and England, added to the hardships and dangers of the few
hardy colonists established at Quebec.
Its environs, the shores of its
noble river, more than once became the battle-field of European armies.
These are periods of strife, happily gone by, we hope, forever.
In his "Pioneers of France in the New World," the gifted Francis
Parkman mournfully reviews the vanished glories of old France in her
former vast dominions in America: -
"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.
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