In 1603 the first systematic effort to found French colonies in America was made.  A company was formed at the head of which was Aymar de Chastes, governor of Dieppe, who sent over Samuel Champlain.  He visited the St. Lawrence, and after careful exploration returned to France with a valuable cargo of furs.  On his arrival he found De Chastes dead, but Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, a patriotic Huguenot, took up the unfinished work.  He received from Henry IV. a patent[7] “to represent our person as lieutenant-general in the country of Acadia from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree,” with governmental authority, and the exclusive privileges of traffic with the Indians.

April 7, 1604, De Monts, accompanied by Champlain, sailed from Havre de Grace, and May 1 came in sight of Sable Island.  They sailed up the Bay of Fundy and entered a harbor on the north coast of Nova Scotia.  Poutrincourt, one of the leading men, was so pleased with the region that he obtained a grant of it from De Monts, and named it Port Royal (now Annapolis).  After further exploration De Monts planted his settlement on the Isle of St. Croix, at the mouth of the St. Croix River, where he passed the winter; but half the emigrants died from exposure and scurvy, and in the spring the colony was transferred to Port Royal.  After three years spent in the country, during which time the coast was explored thoroughly by Champlain and Poutrincourt as far as Nausett Harbor, the Acadian emigrants went back to France, which they reached in October, 1607.

The design was not abandoned.  Poutrincourt returned in 1610 and re-established his colony at Port Royal, which he placed in charge of his son.  In 1611 two Jesuit priests, Biard and Masse, came over, under the patronage of Madame de Guercheville, and in 1613 they planted a Jesuit station at Mount Desert Island, on the coast of Maine.[8]

Champlain did not return to Port Royal, but was employed in another direction.  In April, 1608, De Monts sent out Champlain and Pontgrave to establish a colony on the St. Lawrence and traffic with the Indians of that region.  Of this expedition Champlain was constituted lieutenant-governor, and he was successful in planting a settlement at Quebec in July, 1608.  It was a mere trading-post, and after twenty years it did not number over one hundred persons.  But Champlain looked to the time when Canada should be a prosperous province of France, and he was tireless and persistent.  Aided by several devout friars of the Franciscan order, he labored hard to Christianize the Indians and visited lakes Champlain, Nipissing, Huron, and Ontario.  While he made the fur trade of great value to the merchant company in France, he committed the fatal mistake of mixing up with Indian quarrels.  Between the Five Nations of New York and the Hurons and their allies, the Algonquins of the St. Lawrence, perpetual war prevailed, and Champlain by taking sides against the former incurred for the French the lasting hatred of those powerful Indians.