The Plowshare and the Sword: A Tale of Old Quebec

Although the majority of the thirty-six Dutchmen left aboard had been secured below hatches, those on deck were sufficient to make the odds heavy against the Englishmen. The una...

With the life of Master William Grignion, alderman, and subsequently sheriff, of the City of London, these annals are not concerned. The merchant's existence cannot, however, be...

A month went after the failure of the Dutch venture, and the sachems of the Iroquois still awaited the signal of the raft of fire. Van Vuren had entered the fortress that mornin...

It was an evening of spring in the year of strife 1637. The sun was slowly withdrawing his beams from the fortress of Quebec, which had been established some thirty years back,...

Oskelano, chief of the Algonquins, that unstable race, false alike to friend and foe, and doomed to be the first of the savage tribes to be extinguished, reached the fortress ab...

After their escape from the dangerous region of the fortress on that night of battle, Van Vuren and his band made towards the far-distant country watered by the Hudson, travelli...

The raft of fire, which had been reported to the sachems as visible upon the river, had indeed been ignited and started upon its course by the hands of the Dutch, but without an...

The day following the duel La Salle was under the hands of the surgeon--who, in the ignorance of that age, treated his patient for loss of blood by letting yet more--and Roussil...

Good fortune and fair weather smiled upon the two travellers during the remainder of their journey, and not another notable adventure befell them before they rode from the fores...

When Madame found La Salle gone and the fire black in the early morning, she frowned until her eyes became hidden and went back to the palisade, passing her old servant, who was...

At sunset Roussilac, the commandant of Quebec, after receiving reassuring reports from the sentries and thus closing his official duties for the day, went aboard the man-of-war....

While the pendulum of a clock might have swayed thrice, the four venturers stood facing Onawa as though her words had turned them into stone. Then Hough, forgetting all save rag...

Within the grass-roofed cabin another fire glowed, and beside it Madeleine entertained the guest, her white hands clasped upon her knee, her eyes lustrous as she listened to the...

The military routine of the fortress continued that day as usual, and the approach of night brought no suspicion of the forthcoming assault. The absence of La Salle was alone co...

Roussilac strode towards the river, and in that hour found it in his heart to envy the meanest settler in the land. Like many a man who has risen from the ranks, he found himsel...

In one short day the hand of fate had divided the little band of venturers, destroying the physical life of Flower, leading Woodfield into the trackless forest and losing him th...

It has now been shown how the golden lilies prospered in the north, and how the red lion, who should in time tear those gay lilies down, was laughed at and despised. The paths o...

Before we leave the fortress, to return thither no more, a glance must be taken at Madeleine, evading the power of the Church and the secular arm, escaping from the mother who h...

The moonlight fell softly upon a clearing where a small fire smouldered, where the lord of the isles and his son sat in silence, and between them the great hound full-stretched...

While Geoffrey Viner was winning the love of Madeleine Labroquerie, and escaping the snare which La Salle had contrived for his capture, history was being made around the river...

After that complete repulse of the Iroquois tribes the French found themselves so weak as to be practically at the mercy of a foe. Another resolute attack must have driven them...

Thus Geoffrey became a prisoner among his own people, owing to the friendliness of Von Donck, the honest Dutchman having failed to reckon with the intense suspicion of the Purit...

Had Madame Labroquerie continued firm in her resolve never to approach the fortress while her nephew ruled, all might have been well; but unfortunately for her daughter, and, as...

The Dutch master had played his game of duplicity with no little skill. His arrogant attitude towards the head men of the fortress, his outspoken hatred for the wild north land...

Ambition and not chance had brought La Salle thus far from the beaten track. He had made it his policy to pursue the Englishmen in that land until he should have brought about t...

While Woodfield was a prisoner in the camp of the Algonquins, his comrades, who had searched for him in vain, made their sad parting from George Flower upon the Windy Arm where...

It was summer in the year 1647, and over all the colony of Virginia there was peace. Fortunate were its settlers to be cut apart from their brethren in the isle of strife, where...

The path taken by La Salle ascended and brought him finally to the crest of a hill. Here a wood of storm-beaten pines stood motionless in the white calm of the long winter sleep...

Because the Father of Waters was frozen over and its track buried in snow, despatches from Quebec could only be conveyed by the hand of overland couriers. Winter had set in earl...

The fortress was invested upon three sides: up the precipitous westward slope swarmed the Senacas and Cayugas; the fan-shaped body of the Onondagas advanced from the east, where...

As the days passed, and Van Vuren's attitude of diffident friendliness remained unaltered, Roussilac's suspicions began to leave him; and even La Salle modified his former opini...

Silas Upcliff groaned bitterly when he heard the Puritan's shout. Being a brave man, his spirit inclined towards lending aid to his compatriots, but being honest also, his sense...

Throwing off his sleep with a deep breath so soon as Geoffrey touched his shoulder, Von Donck stared up at the moon, and then upon the equally pale face of the watchman, who kne...

That knowledge of forest-craft, which enables the traveller to guide his feet unerringly through pathless bush, was only in rare instances acquired by the New World venturers, a...

Onawa, daughter of Shuswap, vagrant and traitress, she who had brought disaster upon her own people, continued to reap the reward of all her constancy to the enemy of her race....

The Acadians swept towards the bay, but their governor was not with them. La Salle had gone alone over the cliffs, along the way which Onawa had revealed, and he went not unseen...

Upon the fore-deck of the Dutch ship two sailors were chatting idly beside a lantern's shaded light. They had tramped up and down, performing their duty in a listless fashion, u...

And now in the days when the world is small, and ships of iron rush to and fro upon the seas, and the sword has become a burden, and the mightier plowshare ripples the plain, go...