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 Kirk, actually obtained a commission from Charles I. to conquer Canada, and for that purpose anchored a little squadron at the mouth of the St. Lawrence in the summer of 1628, sending a summons to Quebec to surrender.

As a matter of course, Champlain, although literally driven to bay, with the Indians on one side and the English on the other, returned a spirited answer of defiance, which, to his surprise, resulted in the withdrawal of his enemies, who were totally ignorant of the real state of affairs. A year later, however, Kirk returned, this time sailing up the St. Lawrence, and casting anchor off Quebec. Resistance was hopeless, and Champlain was compelled to surrender his "capital;" but, struck by the noble bearing of his opponent, and by the courage with which he had evidently so long been waging a hopeless contest with the natives, Kirk granted the most liberal terms to the French, who were allowed to remain undisturbed in their homes, which were, moreover, now secured to them by English troops from the raids of the savages.

In the autumn of the year of the taking of Quebec, Kirk left that city under the charge of his brother Lewis, and returned to England, accompanied by Champlain, who hoped to obtain by diplomacy what he had been unable to gain by force; and so earnestly did he plead his cause with the French ambassador in London, that the affairs of New France were brought before the then all-powerful Cardinal Richelieu.

Convinced of the vast importance to his country of the fur-trade and fisheries of Canada, the French Minister negotiated with the English Court for the restoration of Canada, Acadia, and Cape Breton, and after much discussion they were transferred to the French Crown by the treaty of St. Germain de Sage, which put off for more than a century the establishment of the British dominion in Canada.

A year or two before this event, so auspicious to French interests in the West, a new association had been formed in France, known as the "Company of the Hundred Associates," to whom Louis XIII. had given the whole of Canada and of Florida—though the latter, as we are aware, was already claimed by Spain—together with a monopoly of the fur-trade. The cod and whale fisheries of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, however, the French monarch reserved for himself.

The joy of the Company of the Hundred Associates, on the restoration of the privileges which had so suddenly been snatched away from them by Kirk, may be imagined. They at once elected Champlain Governor of New