The survey of the colonization of New France up to 1641 shows that it had been singularly unfruitful. The government of France had never been more than lukewarm after Cartier's voyages. He had given a poor account of the climate of the country, and the loss of a quarter of his crew from scurvy must have confirmed it. Roberval sent on a government expedition, lost fifty of his company and thereafter the private companies all had their disasters from famine and disease to record, beginning with that of Chauvin's, who, having left sixteen men at Tadoussac for the winter, found eleven there on his return.
Were it not for the insatiable desire for commercial gain, through fur monopolies, Canada would have been utterly deserted. There were no industries developed to attract colonists. There had been no gold mines or other treasures exploited to create rushes into a new and harsh country, such as that of the Yukon of late years.
Agriculture, under difficult circumstances, and unsupported by government, or by the companies pledged to encourage it, had also failed. At the end of little more than one hundred years after Jacques Cartier's visit to the St. Lawrence there were only 200 Frenchmen near its waters. Of these about a hundred were fur traders, and their employees, at once furriers and soldiers; and the rest for the greater part were the religious, of three institutions, and their dependents.
As a further anti-colonizing influence, there was to be reckoned with, the love of the French for their own land. The traveler and historian, Lescarbot, himself a Frenchman and a good colonist, speaking of colonizing had said: "If we fail, we must attribute it partly to ourselves who are located in too goodly a land to wish to leave it, and need be in no fear of finding a subsistence therein."
The same sentiment had prevailed up to 1641. But there had been one element alone, which can justly claim to have had some lasting influence and success in the colonizing movement, and that had been the spirit of religious adventure fostered by Champlain, which made the small garrison of Quebec into a small, but not insignificant or undignified, centre of colonization.
We are to see this same desire to bear the light of Christianity and civilization, as the prime moving force of the new movement to settle in Canada, animating the founders of the new Company of Montreal, which is now to appear.