Mr. Parkman briefly, but strikingly,
contrasts the spirit which animated and the fortunes which befell the
representatives of the two European nations,--the one of which has
wrought the romance, the other of which has moulded the living
development, of North America.
Under the specific title of this volume,--the "Pioneers of France in the
New World,"--the author gives us historical narratives of stirring and
even heroic enterprise in two localities at extreme points of our
present territory: first, the story of the sadly abortive attempt made
by the Huguenots to effect a settlement in Florida; and second, the
adventures, undertakings, and discoveries of Champlain, his predecessors
and associates, in and near Canada. The volume is touchingly dedicated
to three near kinsmen of the author,--young men who in the glory and
beauty of their youth, the joy and hope of parents who yielded the
costly sacrifice, gave themselves to the deliverance of our country from
the ruin plotted for it by a slave despotism.
Mr. Parkman mentions--allowing to it in his brief reference all the
weight which it probably deserves--a vague tradition, which, had it been
sustained by fact, would have introduced an entirely new element into
the conditions involved in the rival claims to the right of colonizing
and possessing America, as practically contested by European nations.
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