 CHAPTER IX. A Lonely Ship sailed up the St. Lawrence, the white whales floundering in the Bay of Tadusec, and the wild duck diving as the foam prow drew near, there was no life but these in all that watery solitude, twenty miles from shore to shore. The ship was from Hanfleur, and was commanded by Samuel de Champlain. He was the Anais of a destined people, and in her womb lay the embryo life of Canada. In months, after his exclusive privilege of trade was revoked and his Acadian Enterprise ruined, had, as we have seen, abandoned it to Putrincor. Perhaps it would have been well for him had he abandoned it with all transatlantic enterprises, but the passion for discovery and the noble ambition of founding colonies had taken possession of his mind. These, rather than a mere hope of gain, seemed to have been his controlling motives. Yet the profits of the fur trade were vital to the new designs he was meditating, to meet the heavy outlay they demanded, and he solicited and obtained a fresh monopoly of the traffic for one year. Champlain was at the time in Paris, but his unquiet thoughts turned westward. He was enamored of the new world, whose rugged charms had seized his fancy in his heart, and as explorers of Arctic seas have pined in their repose for polar ice and snow, so did his restless thoughts revert to the fog-wrapped coasts, the piney odors of forests, the noise of waters, the sharp and piercing sunlight, so dear to his remembrance. He longed to unveil the mystery of that boundless wilderness and plant the Catholic faith in the power of France amid its ancient barbarism. Five years before he had explored the St. Lawrence as far as the Rapids above Montreal, was the true site for a settlement, a fortified post, whence, as from a secure basis, the waters of the vast interior might be traced back towards their sources, and a westward route discovered to China and Japan. For the fur trade, too, the innumerable streams that descended to the Great River might all be closed against foreign intrusion by a single fort at some commanding point, and made tributary to a rich and permanent commerce, while, and this was nearer to his heart, for he had often been heard to say that the saving of a soul was worth more than the conquest of an empire, countless savage tribes, in the bondage of Satan, might by the same avenues be reached and redeemed. The mounds embraced his views, and fitting out two ships gave command of one to the elder Pondgrave, of the other to Champlain. The former was to trade with the Indians and bring back the cargo of fur as which, it was hoped, would meet the expense of the voyage. To Champlain fell the harder task of settlement and exploration. Pondgrave, laden with goods for the Indian trade of Tadusac, sailed from Han Fleur on the 5th of April, 1608. Champlain, with men, arms, and stores for the colony, followed eight days later. On the 15th of May he was on the Grand Bank. On the 30th he passed Gaspé, and on the 3rd of June neared Tadusac. No living thing was to be seen. He anchored, lowered a boat, and rode into the fort, round the rocky point at the southeast, then from the fury of its winds and currents, called la Pante de Toulay d'Able. There was life enough within, and more than he cared to find. In the still anchorage under the cliffs lay Pondgrave's vessel, and at her side another ship, which proved to be a Basque fur trader. Pondgrave, arriving a few days before, had found himself anticipated by the Basques, who were busied in a brisk trade with bands of Indians cabined along the borders of the Cove. He displayed the royal letters and commanded a cessation of the prohibited traffic, but the Basque-proof refractory, declared that they would trade in spite of the king, fired on Pondgrave with cannon and musketry, wounded him and two of his men and killed a third. They then boarded his vessel, and carried away all his cannon, small arms, and ammunition, saying that they would restore them when they had finished their trade, and were ready to return home. Champlain found his comrade on shore, in a disabled condition. The Basques, though still strong enough to make fight, were alarmed for the consequences of their conduct, and anxious to come to terms. A peace, therefore, was signed on board their vessel. All differences were referred to the judgment of the French courts. Harmony was restored, and the choleric strangers betook themselves to catching whales. This port of Tadoussac was long the centre of the Canadian fur trade. A desolation of barren mountains closes round it. Betwixt whose ribs of rugged granite, bristling with savins, birches, and furs, the Saguenay rolls its gloomy waters from the northern wilderness. Centuries of civilisation have not tamed the wildness of the place, and still, in grim repose, the mountains hold their guard against the wave-like lake that glistens in their shadow, and doubles in its sullen mirror, crag, precipice, and forest. Near the brink of the cove or harbour where the vessel lay, and a little below the mouth of a brook which formed one of the outlets of this small lake, stood the remains of the wooden barrack built by Chauvin eight years before. Above the brook were the lodges of an Indian camp, stacks of poles covered with birch bark. They belonged to an Algonquin horde, called Montane's, denizens of surrounding wilds, and gatherers of their only harvest, skins of the moose, caribou, and bear, fur of the beaver, martin, otter, fox, wildcat, and lynx. There was this all, for there were intermediate traders betwixt the French and the shivering bands, who roamed the weary stretch of stunted forest between the headwaters of the Saganay and Hudson's Bay. Into fatagable canoe-men, in their birch and vessels, light as eggshells, they threaded the devious tracks of countless rippling streams, shady byways of the forest, where the wild ducks scarcely find depth to swim. Then descended to their mart along those scenes of picturesque yet dreary grandeur, which steam has made familiar to modern tourists. With slowly moving paddles, they glided beneath the cliff, whose shaggy brows frown across the zenith, and whose base the deep waves wash with a horse and hollow cadence, and they passed the sepulcher bay of the trinity, dark as the tide of a caron, a sanctuary of solitude and silence, depth switch as the fable runs, no sounding line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling eagle seems a speck. Peace being established with the basks and the wounded pond-grave busied, as far as might be, in transferring to the hold of his ship the rich lading of the Indian canoes, Champlain spread his sails, and again held his course up the St. Lawrence. Far to the south, in sun and shadow, slumbered the woody mountains whence fell the countless springs of the St. John, behind tenantless shores, now white with glimmering villages, La Chagnac, Granville, Camerasca, St. Rose, St. John, Vincelot, Berthier. But on the north the jealous wilderness still asserts its sway, crowding to the river's verge its walls, domes, and towers of granite, and to this hour its solitude is scarcely broken. Above the point of the island of Orléans, a constriction of the vast channel narrows it to less than a mile, with the green heights of Point Levy on the one side, and on the other the cliffs of Quebec. Here, a small stream, the St. Charles, enters the St. Lawrence, and in the angle betwixt them rises the promontory on two sides a natural fortress. Between the cliffs and the river lay a strand covered with walnuts and other trees. From this strand, by a rough passage gullied downward from the place where Prescott Gate now guards the way, one might climb the height to the broken plateau above, now burdened with its ponderous load of churches, convents, dwellings, ramparts, and batteries. Thence by a gradual ascent the rock sloped upward to its highest summit, Cape Diamond, looking down on the St. Lawrence from a height of three hundred and fifty feet. Here the citadel now stands, then the fierce sun fell on the bald, baking rock, with its crisp mosses and parched lichens. Two centuries and a half have quickened the solitude with swarming life, covered the deep bosom of the river with barge and steamer and gliding sail, and reared cities and villages on the side of forests, but nothing can destroy the surpassing grandeur of the scene. On the strand between the water and the cliffs, Champlain's axmen fell to their work. They were pioneers of an advancing host. Seeing it is true, with feeble and uncertain progress, priests, soldiers, peasants, feudal scutians, royal insignia, not the middle age but engendered of it by the stronger life of modern centralization, sharply stamped with a parental likeness, heir to parental weakness and parental force. In a few weeks a pile of wooden buildings rose on the brink of the St. Lawrence, on or near the side of the marketplace of the lower town of Quebec. The pencil of Champlain, always regardless of proportion and perspective, has preserved its likeness. A strong wooden wall, surmounted by a gallery loop-hold for musketry, enclosed three buildings, containing quarters for himself and his men, together with a courtyard, from one side of which rose a tall dove-cott like a belfry. A moat surrounded the hole, and two or three small cannon were planted on salient platforms towards the river. There was a large store-house near at hand, and a part of the adjacent ground was laid out as a garden. In this garden Champlain was one morning directing his laborers, when Tethu, his pilot, approached him with an anxious countenance, and muttered a request to speak with him in private. Champlain ascending, they withdrew to the neighboring woods, when the pilot disburdened himself of his secret. One Antoine Natel, a locksmith, smitten by conscience or fear, had revealed to him a conspiracy to murder his commander and deliver Quebec into the hands of the Basques and Spaniards, then at Tadoussac. Another locksmith, named Duval, was author of the plot, and with the eight of three accomplices, had befooled or frightened nearly all the company into taking part of it. Each was assured that he should make his fortune, all were mutually pledged to poignard the first betrayer of the secret. The critical point of their enterprise was the killing of Champlain. Some were for strangling him, some for raising a false alarm in the night and shooting him as he came out from his quarters. Having heard the pilot's story, Champlain, remaining in the woods, desired his informant to find Antoine Natel and bring him to the spot. Natel soon appeared, trembling with excitement and fear, and a close examination left no doubt of the truth of his statement. A small vessel, built by Pontgrave at Tadoussac, had lately arrived, and orders were now given that it should anchor close at hand. On board was a young man in whom confidence could be placed. Champlain sent him two bottles of wine, with a direction to tell the four ring-leaders that they had been given him by his Basque friends at Tadoussac, and to invite them to share the good cheer. They came aboard in the evening, and were seized and secured. Voila don Megalon bien est donné, writes Champlain. It was ten o'clock, and most of the men on shore were asleep. They were wakened suddenly, and told of the discovery of the plot and the arrest of the ring-leaders. Pardon was then promised them, and they were dismissed again to their beds, greatly relieved, for they had lived in trepidation, each fearing the other. Duval's body, swinging from a gibbet, gave wholesome warning to those he had seduced, and his head was displayed on a pike, from the highest roof of the buildings, food for birds and a lesson to sedition. His three accomplices were carried by Pontgrave to France, where they made their atoman in the galleys. It was on the eighteenth of September that Pontgrave set sail, leaving Champlain and twenty-eight men to hold Quebec through the winter. Three weeks later, and shores and hills glowed with gay prognostics of approaching desolation, the yellow and scarlet of the maples, the deep purple of the ash, the garnet hue of young oaks, the crimson of the tuppolo at the water's edge, and the golden plumage of birch saplings and fishers in the cliffs. It was a short-lived beauty. The forest dropped its festal robes. Shriveled and faded, they wrestled to the earth. The crystal air and laughing sun of October passed away, and November sank upon the shivering waste, chill and sombre as the tomb. A roving band of Montanés had built their huts near the buildings, and were busying themselves with their autumnal eel-fissurey, on which they greatly relied to sustain their miserable lives through the winter. Their slimy harvests being gathered, and duly smoked and dried, they gave it for safekeeping to Champlain, and set out to hunt beavers. It was deep in the winter before they came back, reclaimed their ills, built their birch cabins again, and disposed them so for a life of ease, until famine or their enemies should put an end to their enjoyments. These were by no means without a loy. While gorged with food, they laid dozing on piles of branches in their smoky huts, where, through the crevices of the thin birch bark, streamed in a cold capable of times at congealing mercury. Their slumbers were beset with nightmare visions of Iroquois forays, scalping, butchering, and burnings. As dreams were their oracles, the camp was wild with fright. They sent out no scouts and placed no guard, but with each repetition of these nocturnal terrors they came flocking in a body to beg admission within the fort. The women and children were allowed to enter the yard and remain during the night, while anxious fathers and jealous husbands shivered in the darkness without. On one occasion a group of wretched beings was seen on the farther bank of the St. Lawrence, like wild animals driven by famine to the borders of the settlers' clearing. The river was full of drifting ice, and there was no crossing without risk of life. The Indians, in their desperation, made the attempt, and midway their canoes were ground to atoms among the tossing masses. Agile as wildcats they all leaped upon a huge raft of ice, the squaws carrying their children on their shoulders, a feat at which Champlain marveled when he saw their starved and emaciated condition. Here they began a whale of despair, when happily the pressure of other masses thrust the sheet of ice against the northern shore. They landed and soon made their appearance at the fort, turned to skeletons and horrible to look upon. The French gave them food which they devoured with a frenzy divinity, and unappeased fell upon a dead dog left on the snow by Champlain for two months past as a bait for foxes. They broke this carrion into fragments, and thawed and devoured it to the disgust of the spectators who tried vainly to prevent them. This was but a severe access of the periodical famine which, during the winter, was a normal condition of the Algonquin tribes of Acadia and the lower St. Lawrence, who, unlike the cognate tribes of New England, never tilled the soil, or made any reasonable provision against the time of need. One would gladly know how the founders of Quebec spent the long hours of their first winter, but on this point the only man among them, perhaps who could write, has not thought it necessary to enlarge. He himself beguiled his leisure with trapping foxes, or hanging a dead dog from a tree and watching the hungry martins in their efforts to reach it. Towards the close of winter all found abundant employment in nursing themselves or their neighbors, for the inevitable scurvy broke out with a virulence. At the middle of May only eight men of the twenty-eight were alive, and half of these were suffering from disease. This wintry purgatory wore away. The icy stalactites that hung from the cliffs fell crashing to the earth. The clamor of the wild geese was heard. The bluebirds appeared in the naked woods. The water willows were covered with their soft caterpillar-like blossoms. The twigs of the swamp-maple were flushed with ready bloom. The ash hung out its black tufts. The shad-bush seemed a weath of snow. The white stars of the blood-brute gleamed among the dank fallen leaves, and in the young grass of the wet meadows the marsh marigolds shone like spots of gold. Great was the joy of Champlain when, on the fifth of June, he saw a sailboat rounding the point of Bois-Lion, betokening that spring had brought with it the long four suckers. A son-in-law of Pondgrave, named Marais, was on board, and he reported that Pondgrave was then at Tadusac, where he had lately arrived. The other Champlain hastened to take counsel with his comrade. His constitution or his courage had defied the scurvy. They met, and it was determined betwixt them that while Pondgrave remained in charge of Quebec, Champlain should enter at once on his long meditated explorations, by which, like Glissal, seventy years later he had good hope of finding a way to China. But there was a lion in the path. The Indian tribes, to whom peace was unknown, invested with their scalping parties the streams and pathways of the forest, and increased tenfold its inseparable risks. The after-career of Champlain gives abundant proof that he was more than indifferent to all such chances, yet now an expedient for abating them offered itself, so consonant with his instincts that he was glad to accept it. During the last autumn a young chief from the banks of the then unknown Ottawa had been at Quebec, and amazed at what he saw he had begged Champlain to join him in the spring against his enemies. These enemies were formidable race of savages, the Iroquois, or five Confederate nations, who dwelt in fortified villages within limits now embraced by the State of New York, and who were a terror to all the surrounding forests. They were deadly foes of their kindred the Hurons, who dwelt on the lake which bears their name, and were allies of Algonquin bands on the Ottawa. All alike were tillers of the soil, living at ease when compared with the famished Algonquins of the lower St. Lawrence. By joining these Hurons and Algonquins against their Iroquois enemies, Champlain might make himself the indispensable ally and leader of the tribes of Canada, and at the same time fight his way to discovery in regions which otherwise were barred against him. From first to last it was the policy of France and America to mingle in Indian politics, hold the balance of power between adverse tribes, and envelop in the network of her power and diplomacy the remotest hordes of the wilderness. Of this policy the father of New France may perhaps be held to have set a rash and premature example. Yet while he was apparently following the dictates of his own adventurous spirit, it became evident a few years later that under his thirst for discovery and spirit of night errantry lay a consistent and deliberate purpose. That it had already assumed a definite shape is not likely, but his after-course makes it plain that, in embroiling himself in his colony with the most formidable savages on the continent, he was by no means acting so recklessly as at first sight would appear. CHAPTER X of Pioneers of France in the New World, Part II CHAPTER X It was past the middle of June, and the expected warriors from the upper country had not come, a delay which seems to have given Champlain little concern, for without waiting longer he set out with no better allies than a band of Monteneys. But as he moved up the St. Lawrence, he saw, thickly clustered in the bordering forest, the lodges of an Indian camp, and landing found his Huron and Algonquin allies. Few of them had ever seen a white man, and they surrounded the steel-clad strangers in speechless wonder. Queen asked for their chief, and the staring throng moved with him towards a lodge where sat, not one chief but two, for each band had its own. There were feasting, smoking, and speeches, and the needful ceremony over, all descended together to Quebec, for the strangers were bent on seeing those wonders of architecture, the fame of which had pierced the recesses of their forests. On their arrival they feasted their eyes and glutted their appetites, yelped consternation at the sharp explosions of the arch-boos and the roar of the cannon, pitched their camps and bedecked themselves for their war-dance. In the still night their fire glared against the black and jagged cliff, and the fierce red light fell on tawny limbs convulsed with frenzy gestures and ferocious stampings on contorted visages, hideous with paint, on brandished weapons, on stone war-clubs, stone hatchets, and stone-pointed lances, while the drum kept up its hollow boom, and the air was split with mingled yells. The war-feast followed, and then all embarked together. Champlain was in a small shallot, carrying, besides himself, eleven men of Pont Graves' party, including his son-in-law, Marais, and the pilot, La Rout. They were armed with the arch-boos, a match-lock or fire-lock somewhat like the modern carbine, and from its shortness not ill-suited for use in the forest. On the twenty-eighth of June they spread their sails and held their course against the current, while around them the river was alive with canoes, and hundreds of naked arms plied the paddle with a steady, measured sweep. They crossed the lake of St. Peter, threaded the devious channels among its many islands, and reached at last the mouth of the Rivier des Iroquois, since called the Richelins or the Saint-Jean. Here, probably on the side of the town of Sorrel, the leisurely warriors encamped for two days, hunted, fished, and took their ease, regaling their allies with venison and wildfowl. They quarreled, too. Three-fourths of their number seceded, took to their canoes in Duggan, and paddled towards their homes, while the rest pursued their course up the broad and placid stream. Walls of Verdure stretched on left and right. Now aloft in the lonely air rose the cliffs of Balciol, and now, before them, framed in circling forest, the basin of Chamblis spread its tranquil mirror, glittering in the sun. The shallop out sailed the canoes. Champlain, leaving his allies behind, crossed the basin and tried to pursue his course. But as he listed in the stillness the unwelcome noise of rapids reached his ear, and by glimpses through the dark foliage of the islets of St. John he could see the gleam of snowy foam and the flashing of hurrying waters. Along the boat by the shore in charge of four men he went with Mare, La Rout, and five others to explore the wild before him. They pushed their way through the dams and shadows of the wood, through thickets and tangled vines, over mossy rocks and mouldering logs. Still the horse-surging of the rapids followed them, and when, parting the screen of foliage, they looked out upon the river, they saw it thick set with rocks, where plunging over ledges, gurgling under drift logs, darting along clefts, and boiling in chasms, the angry waters filled the solitude with monotonous ravings. Champlain retraced his steps. He had learned the value of an Indian's word. His allies had promised him that his boat could pass unobstructed throughout the whole journey. It afflicted me, he says, and troubled me exceedingly to be obliged to return without having seen so great a lake, full of fair islands and bordered with fine countries which they had described to me. When he reached the boat, he found the whole savage crew gathered at the spot. He mildly rebuked their bad faith, but added that though they had deceived him, he, as far as might be, would fulfill his pledge. To this end he directed Marais, with the boat and the greater part of the men, to return to Quebec, while he, with two who offered to follow him, should proceed in the Indian canoes. The warriors lifted their canoes from the water and bore them on their shoulders half a league through the forest to the smoother stream above. Here the chiefs made a muster of their forces, counting twenty-four canoes and sixty warriors. All embarked again and advanced once more, by marsh, meadow, forest, and scattered islands, then full of gain, for it was an uninhabited land, the warpath and the battleground of hostile tribes. The warriors observed a certain system in their advance. Some were in front as a vanguard, others formed the main body, while an equal number were in the forests on the flanks and rear, hunting for the subsistence of the whole. For though they had a provision of parched maize pounded into meal, they kept it for use when, from the vicinity of the enemy, hunting should become impossible. Late in the day they landed and drew up their canoes, ranging them closely side by side. Some stripped sheets of bark to cover their camp-sheds, others gathered wood, the forest being full of dead, dry trees, others felled the living trees for a barricade. They seemed to have had steel axes obtained by barter from the French, for in less than two hours they had made a strong defensive work in the form of a half-circle, open on the river-side, where their canoes lay on the strand and large enough to enclose all their huts and sheds. Some of their number had gone forward as scouts, and returning reported no signs of an enemy. This was the extent of their precaution, for they placed no guard, but all in full security stretched themselves to sleep, a vicious custom from which the lazy warrior of the forest rarely departs. They had not forgotten, however, to consult their oracle. The medicine man pitched his magic lodge in the woods, formed of a small stack of poles, planted in a circle and brought together at the tops like stacked muskets. Over these he placed the filthy deerskins which served him for a robe, and, creeping in at a narrow opening, hid himself from view. Crouched in a ball upon the earth, he invoked the spirits and mumbling in articulate tones, while his naked auditory, squatted on the ground like apes, listened in wonder and awe. Suddenly the lodge moved, rocking with violence, to and fro, by the power of the spirits as the Indians thought, while Champlain could plainly see the tawny fist of the medicine man shaking the poles. They begged him to keep a watchful eye on the peak of the lodge, whence fire and smoke would presently issue, but with the best efforts of his vision he discovered none. Meanwhile the medicine man was seized with such convulsions that when his divination was over his naked body streamed with perspiration. In loud, clear tones and in an unknown tongue he invoked the spirit who was understood to be present in the form of a stone, and whose feeble and squeaking accents were herded intervals like the wail of a young puppy. In this manner they consulted the spirit, as Champlain thinks the devil at all their camps. His replies for the most part seemed to have given them great content, yet they took other measures of which the military advantages were less questionable. The principal chief gathered bundles of sticks, and without wasting his breath struck them in the earth in a certain order, calling each by the name of some warrior a few taller than the rest representing the subordinate chiefs. Thus was indicated the position which each was to hold in the expected battle. All gathered round and attentively studied the sticks, finished like a child's wooden soldiers, or the pieces on a chess board. Then with no further instruction they formed their ranks, broke them, and reformed them again and again with excellent alacrity and skill. Again the canoes advanced, the river widening as they went. Great islands appeared, leagues in extent. Isle Alamate, Long Island, Grand Isle, channels where ships might float in broad reaches of water stretched between them, and Champlain entered the lake which preserves his name to posterity. Cumberland head was passed, and from the opening of the great channel between Grand Isle and the Main he could look forth on the wilderness sea. Edged with woods the tranquil flood spread southward beyond sight. Far on the left rose the forest ridges of the Green Mountains, and on the right the Adirondacks, haunts in these later years of amateur sportsmen from counting rooms or college halls. Then the Iroquois made them their hunting ground, and beyond in the valleys of the Mohawk, the Onondanga, and the Janisca stretched the long line of their five cantons and palisaded towns. At night they encamped again. The scene is a familiar one to many a tourist, and perhaps standing at sunset on the peaceful strand, Champlain saw what a roving student of this generation has seen on those same shores at that same hour, the glow of the vanished sun behind the western mountains, darkly piled in mist and shadow along the sky. Near at hand the dead pine, mighty in decay, stretching its ragged arms, a thwart the burning heaven. The crow perched on its top like an image carved in jet, and a loft, the night-hawk, circling in its flight, and with a strange whirring sound, diving through the air each moment for the insects he makes his prey. The progress of the party was becoming dangerous. They changed their mode of advance and moved only in the night. All day they lay close in the depth of the forest, sleeping, lounging, smoking tobacco of their own raising, and beguiling the hours, no doubt, with the shallow banter and obscene jesting with which knots of Indians are want to amuse their leisure. At twilight they embarked again, paddling their cautious way till the eastern sky began to redden. Their goal was the rocky promontory where Fort Ticonderoga was long afterwards built. Thence they would pass the outlet of Lake George and launch their canoes again on that komo of the wilderness, whose waters, limpid as a fountain-head, stretched far southward between their flanking mountains. Landing at the future side of Fort William Henry they would carry their canoes through the forest to the river Hudson, and descending it, attack perhaps some outlying town of the Mohawks. In the next century this chain of lakes and rivers became the grand highway of savage and civilized war linked to memories of momentous conflicts. The allies were spared so long a progress. On the morning of the twenty-ninth of July, after paddling all night, they hid as usual in the forest on the western shore, apparently between Crown Point and Ticonderoga. The warriors stretched themselves to their slumbers and Champlain after walking till nine or ten o'clock through the surrounding woods returned to take his repose on a pile of spruce boughs. In the morning he dreamed a dream wherein he beheld the Iroquois drowning in the lake, and trying to rescue them he was told by his Algonquin friends that they were good for nothing and had better be left to their fate. For some time past he had been beset every morning by his superstitious allies, eager to learn about his dreams, and to this moment his unbroken slumbers had failed to furnish the desired prognostics. The announcement of this auspicious vision filled the crowd with joy, and at nightfall they embarked, flushed with anticipated victories. It was ten o'clock in the evening when near a projecting point of land, which was probably Ticonderoga, they described dark objects in motion on the lake before them. These were a flotilla of Iroquois canoes, heavier and slower than theirs, for they were made of oak bark. Each party saw the other, and the mingled war cries peeled over the darkened water. The Iroquois, who were near the shore, having no stomach for an aquatic battle, landed, and making night hideous with their clamors, began to barricade themselves. Champlain could see them in the woods, laboring like beavers, hacking down trees with iron axes taken from the Canadian tribes in war, and with stone hatchets of their own making. The allies remained on the lake, a bow shot from the hostile barricade, their canoes made fast together by poles lashed across. All night they danced with as much vigor as the frailty of their vessels would permit, their throats making amends for the enforced restraint of their limbs. It was agreed on both sides that the fight should be deferred till daybreak, but meanwhile a commerce of abuse, sarcasm, menace, and boasting gave unceasing exercise to the lungs and fancy of the combatants. Much, says Champlain, like the besiegers and besieged in a beleaguered town. As day approached he and his two followers put on the light armor of the time. Champlain wore the doublet in long hose than in vogue. Over the doublet he buckled on a breastplate and probably a back piece, while his thighs were protected by cooses of steel and his head by a plumed cask. Across his shoulder hung the strap of his bandolier, or ammunition box, at his side with his sword and in his hand his arch-boost. Such was the equipment of this ancient Indian fighter, whose exploits date eleven years before the landing of the Puritans at Plymouth, and sixty-six years before King Philip's war. Each of the three Frenchmen was in a separate canoe, and as it grew light they kept themselves hidden, either by lying at the bottom or covering themselves with an Indian robe. The canoes approached the shore, and all landed without opposition at some distance from the Iroquois, whom they presently could see filing out of their barricade, tall, strong men, some two hundred in number, the boldest and fiercest warriors of North America. They advanced through the forest with a steadiness which excited the admiration of Champlain. Among them could be seen three chiefs made conspicuous by their tall plumes. Some bore shields of wood and hide, and some were covered with a kind of armor made of rough twigs interlaced with the vegetable fiber supposed by Champlain to be cotton. The allies, growing anxious, called with loud cries for their champion, and opened their ranks that he might pass to the front. And it so, and advancing before his red companions in arms, stood revealed to the gates of the Iroquois, who, beholding the war-like apparition in their path, stared in mute amazement. "'I looked at them,' says Champlain, and they looked at me. When I saw them getting ready to shoot their arrows at us, I levelled my arch-boost, which I had loaded with four balls, and aimed straight at one of the three chiefs. The shot brought down two, and wounded another. On this our Indians set up such a yelling that one could not have heard a thunder clap, and all the while the arrows flew thick on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly astonished and frightened to see two of their men killed so quickly, in spite of their arrow-proof armor. As I was reloading, one of my companions fired a shot from the woods, which so increased their astonishment that, seeing their chiefs dead, they abandoned the field and fled into the depth of the forest. The allies dashed after them. Some of the Iroquois were killed, and more were taken. Stopped, canoes, provisions, all were abandoned, and many weapons flung down in the panic flight. The victory was complete. At night the victors let out one of the prisoners, told him that he was to die by fire, and ordered him to sing his death-song if he dared. Then they began the torture and presently scalped their victim alive, when Champlain, sickening at the sight, begged leave to shoot him. They refused, and he turned away in anger and disgust, on which they called him back and told him to do as he pleased. He turned again, and a shot from his archibus put the wretch out of misery. The scene filled him with horror, but a few months later, on the Place de la Graeve at Paris, he might have witnessed tortures equally revolting and equally vindictive, inflicted on the registered Ravaillac by the sentence of grave and learned judges. The allies made a prompt retreat from the scene of their triumph. Three or four days brought them to the mouth of the Richeland. Where they separated, the Hurons and Algonquins made for Ottawa, their homeward route, each with a share of prisoners for future torments. At parting, they invited Champlain to visit their towns and aid them again in their wars, an invitation which this paladin of the woods failed not to accept. The companions now remaining to him were the Montañes. In their camp on the Richeland, one of them dreamed that a war party of Iroquois was close upon them, on which, in a torrent of rain, they left their huts, paddled and dismayed to the islands above the Lake of St. Peter, and hid themselves all night in the rushes. In the morning they took heart, emerged from their hiding places, descended on Quebec, and went thence to Tadoussac, wither Champlain accompanied them. Here the squaws, stark naked, swam out to the canoes to receive the heads of the dead Iroquois, and hanging them from their necks, danced in triumph along the shore. One of the heads and a pair of arms were then bestowed on Champlain, touching memorials of gratitude, which, however, he was by no means to keep for himself but to present to the king. Thus did New France rush into collision with the redoubted warriors of the five nations. Here was the beginning, and in some measure doubtless the cause, of a long suite of murderous conflicts bearing havoc and flame to generations yet unborn. Champlain had invaded the Tiger's Den, and now, in smothered fury, the patient savage would lie biding his day of blood. The King was at Fontainebleau. It was a few months before his assassination, and here Champlain recounted his adventures to the great satisfaction of the lively monarch. He gave him also not the head of the dead Iroquois, but a belt wrought in embroidery of dyed quills of the Canada porcupine, together with two small birds of scarlet plumage and the skull of a garfish. Demons was at court, striving for a renewal of his monopoly. His efforts failed, on which, with great spirit but little discretion, he resolved to push his enterprise without it. Early in the spring of 1610 the ship was ready, and Champlain and Pontgrave were on board, when a violent illness seized the former, reducing him to the most miserable of all conflicts, the battle of the eager spirit against the treacherous and failing flesh. Having partially recovered, he put to sea, giddy and weak, in wretched plight for the hard career of toil and battle which the new world offered him. The voyage was prosperous, no other mishap occurring than that of an ardent youth of Scentmallow, who drank the health of Pontgrave with such persistent enthusiasm that he fell overboard and was drowned. There were ships at Tadusuck, fast loading with furs, and boats, too, higher up the river, anticipating the trade and draining Demons's resources in advance. Champlain, who was left free to fight and explore wherever he should see fit, had provided, to use his own phrase, two strings to his bow. On the one hand the Monteneys had promised to guide him northward to Hudson's Bay. On the other the Hurons were to show him the great lakes, with the mines of copper on their shores, and to each the same reward was promised to join them against the common foe, the Iroquois. The rendezvous was at the mouth of the river Richelon. Thither the Hurons were to descend in force, together with Algonquins of the Ottawa, and thither Champlain now repaired, while around his boats warmed a multitude of Monteneys canoes, filled with warriors whose lank hair streamed loose in the wind. There is an island in the St. Lawrence near the mouth of the Richelon. On the nineteenth of June it was swarming with busy and clamorous savages. Champlain's Monteney allies, cutting down the trees and clearing the ground for a dance at a feast, for they were hourly expecting the Algonquin warriors, and were eager to welcome them with befitting honours. But suddenly, far out on the river, they saw an advancing canoe. Now on this side, now on that, the flashing paddles urged it forward as if death were on its track, and as it drew near, the Indians on board cried out that the Algonquins were in a forest, a league distant, engaged with a hundred warriors of the Iroquois, who outnumbered were fighting savagely within a barricade of trees. The air was split with shrill outcries. The Monteney's snatched their weapons, shields, bows, arrows, war-clubs, sword-blades made fast to poles, and ran headlong to their canoes, impeding each other in their haste, screeching to Champlain to follow, and invoking with no less vehemence the aid of certain fur-traders, just arrived on four boats from below. These, as it was not their cue to fight, lent them a deaf ear, on which, in disgust and scorn, they paddled off, calling to the recusants that they were women, fit for nothing but to make war on beaver skins. Champlain and four of his men were in the canoes. They shot across the intervening water, and as their prowls grated on the pebbles, each warrior flung down his paddle, snatched his weapons, and ran into the woods. The five Frenchmen followed, striving vainly to keep pace with the naked, light-limbed ramble, bounding like shadows through the forest. They quickly disappeared. Even their shrill chorise grew faint, till Champlain and his men, discomforted and vexed, found themselves deserted in the midst of a swamp. The day was sultry, the forest air-heavy, close and filled with hosts of mosquitoes, so thick, says the chief sufferer, that we could scarcely draw breath, and it was wonderful how cruelly they persecuted us. Through black mud, spongy moss, water knee-deep, overfallen trees, among slimy logs and entangling roots, tripped by vines, lashed by recoiling boughs, panting under their steel head-pieces and heavy coarselets, the Frenchmen struggled on, bewildered and indignant. At length they described two Indians running in the distance, and shouted to them in desperation that if they wanted their aid they must guide them to the enemy. At length they could hear the yells of the combatants. There was light in the forest before them, and they issued into a partial clearing made by the Iroquois axmen near the river. Champlain saw their barricade. Trees were piled into a circular breastwork, trunk, boughs and matted foliage forming a strong defence, within which the Iroquois stood savagely at bay. Around them flocked the allies, half hidden in the edges of the forest, like hounds around a wild boar, eager, clamorous, yet afraid to rush in. They had attacked and had met a bloody rebuff. All their hope was now in the French, and when they saw them a yellow rose from hundreds of throats that outdid the wilderness voices once its tones were borrowed, the hoop of the horned owl, the scream of the cougar, the howl of starved wolves on winter night. A fierce response peeled from the desperate band within, and amid a storm of arrows from both sides the Frenchmen threw themselves into the fray, firing at random through the fence of trunks, boughs and drooping leaves, with which the Iroquois had encircled themselves. Champlain felt a stone headed arrow splitting his ear and tearing through the muscles of his neck. He drew it out, and the moment after did a similar office for one of his men. But the Iroquois had not recovered from their first terror at the arch-boosts, and when the mysterious and terrible assailants, clad in steel and armed with thunderbolts, ran up to the barricade, thrust their pieces through the openings and shot death among the crowd within, they could not control their fright, but with every report through themselves flat on the ground. Animated with unwanted valor, the allies, covered by their large shields, began to drag out the felled trees of the barricade, while others, under Champlain's direction, gathered at the edge of the forest, preparing to close the affair with a final rush. New actors soon appeared on the scene. These were a boat's crew of the fur traders under a young man of Saint Malo, one de Prairie, who, when he heard the firing, could not resist the impulse to join the fight. On seeing them, Champlain checked the assault, in order, as he says, that the newcomers might have their share in the sport. The traders opened fire with great zest and no less execution, while the Iroquois, now wild with terror, leaped and writhed to dodge the shot which tore through their frail armor of twigs. Champlain gave the signal, the crowd ran to the barricade, dragged down the bowels or clamored over them, and bore themselves, in his own words, so well and manfully, that those scratched and torn by the sharp points they quickly forced an entrance. The French ceased their fire, and, followed by a smaller body of Indians, scaled the barricade on the farther side. Now, amid howlings, shouts, and screeches, the work was finished. Some of the Iroquois were cut down as they stood, hewing with their war-clubs, and foaming like slaughtered tigers. Some climbed the barry and were killed by the furious crowd without. Some were drowned in the river, while fifteen, the only survivors, were made prisoners. By the grace of God, writes Champlain, behold, the battle won. Drunk with ferocious ecstasy, the conquerors scalped the dead and gathered faggots for the living, while some of the fur-traders, too late to bear part in the fight, robbed the carcasses of their blood-bedrenched robes of beaver skin amid the derision of the surrounding Indians. That night the torture-fires blazed along the shore. Champlain saved one prisoner from their clutches, but nothing could save the rest. One body was quartered and eaten. As for the rest of the prisoners, says Champlain, they were kept to be put to death by the women and the girls, who in this respect are no less inhuman than the men, and indeed much more so, for by their subtlety they invent more cruel tortures and take pleasure in it. On the next day a large band of Hurons appeared at the rendezvous, greatly vexed that they had come too late. The shores were thickly studded with Indian huts, and the woods were full of them. Here were warriors of three designations, including many subordinate tribes and representing three grades of savage society. The Hurons, the Algonquins of the Ottawa, and the Montagniers, afterwards styled by a Franciscan friar than whom few men better knew them, the nobles, the burgers, and the peasantry and paupers of the forest. Many of them, from the remote interior, had never before seen a white man, and wrapped like statues in their robes, they stood gazing on the French with a fixed stare of wild and wondering eyes. Judged by the standard of Indian war, a heavy blow had been struck on the common enemy. Here were hundreds of assembled warriors, yet none thought of following up their success. Elated with unexpected fortune, they danced and sang, then loaded their canoes, hung their scalps on poles, broke up their camps, and set out triumphant for their homes. Champlain had fought their battles, and now might claim, on their part, guidance and escort to the distant interior. Why he did not do so is scarcely apparent. There were cares, it seems, connected with the very life of his puny colony which demanded his return to France. Nor were his anxieties lessened by the arrival of a ship from his native town of Brage, with tidings of the king's assassination. Here was a death-blow to all that had remained of de Mont's credit at court, while that unfortunate nobleman, like his old associate, Putrencourt, was moving with swift strides toward financial ruin. With the revocation of his monopoly, fur traders had swarmed to the St. Lawrence. Tadoussac was full of them, and for that year the trade was spoiled. Far from aiding to support a burdensome enterprise of colonization, it was in itself an occasion of heavy loss. Champlain bade farewell to his garden at Quebec, where maize, wheat, rye, and barley, with vegetables of all kinds, and a small vineyard of native grapes, for he was a zealous horticulturalist, held forth a promise which he was not deceitful-filled. He left one du Parc in command, with sixteen men, and sailing on the Eighth of August, arrived at Han Fleur with no worse accident than that of running over a sleeping-whale near the Grand Bank. With the opening spring he was afloat again. Perils awaited him worse than those of Iroquois Tomahawks. For approaching Newfoundland the ship was entangled for days among drifting fields and bergs of ice. Escaping at length, she arrived at Tadoussac on the thirteenth of May, sixteen-eleven. She had anticipated the spring. Forests and mountains, far and near, were all white with snow. A principal object with Champlain was to establish such relations with the great Indian communities of the interior as to secure to demands and his associates the advantage of trade with them. And to this end he now repaired to Montreal, a position in the gateway as it were, of their yearly descents of trade or war. On arriving he began to survey the ground for the sight of a permanent post. A few days convinced him that under the present system all his efforts would be vain. Wild reports of the wonders of New France had gone abroad, and a crowd of hungry adventurers had hastened to the land of promise. Eager to grow rich, they scarcely knew how, and soon to return disgusted. A fleet of boats and small vessels followed in Champlain's wake. Within a few days thirteen of them arrived at Montreal, and more soon appeared. He was to break the ground, others would reap the harvest. Travel, discovery, and battle all must endure to the profit, not of the colony, but to a crew of greedy traders. Champlain, however, chose the sight and cleared the ground for his intended post. It was immediately above a small stream, now running under arches of masonry, and entering the St. Lawrence at Pointe-Calier, within the modern city. He called it Place Royal, and here, on the margin of the river, he built a wall of bricks made on the spot, in order to measure the destructive effects of the ice-shove in the spring. Now, down the surges of Saint-Louis, where the mighty floods of the St. Lawrence contracted to a narrow throat, roll in fury among their sunken rocks, here, through foam and spray in the roar of the angry torrent, a fleet of birch canoes came dancing like dry leaves on the froth of some riotous brook. They bore a band of Hurons first at the rendezvous. As they drew near the landing, all the fur traders' boats blazed out a clattering fuselage which was designed to bid them welcome, but in fact terrified many of them to such a degree that they scarcely dared to come ashore. Nor were they reassured by the bearing of the disorderly crowd, who in jealous competition for their beaver-skins left them not a moment's peace and outraged all their notions of decorum. More soon appeared, till hundreds of warriors were encamped along the shore, all restless, suspicious, and alarmed. Late one night they awakened Champlain. On going with them to their camp he found chiefs and warriors in solemn conclave around the glimmering fire-light. Though they were fearful of the rest, their trust in him was boundless. Come to our country, buy our beaver, build a fort, teach us the true faith, do what you will, but do not bring this crowd with you. The idea had seized them that these lawless bands of rival traders, all well armed, meant to plunder and kill them. Champlain assured them of safety, and the whole night was consumed in friendly colloquy. Soon afterward, however, the camp broke up, and the uneasy warriors were moved to the borders of the Lake of Saint-Louis, placing the rapids betwixt themselves and the objects of their alarm. Here Champlain visited them, and hence these intrepid canoemen, kneeling in their birch and eggshells, carried him homeward down the rapids, somewhat, as he admits, to the discomposure of his nerves. The great gathering dispersed, the traders descended to Tadusac and Champlain to Quebec, while the Indians went, some to their homes, some to fight the Iroquois. A few months later Champlain was in close conference with Demonts at Pond, a place near Rochelle, of which the latter was Governor. The last two years had made it apparent that, to keep the colony alive and maintain a basis for those discoveries on which his heart was bent, was impossible without a change of system. Demonts, engrossed with the cares of his government, placed all in the hands of his associate, and Champlain, fully empowered to act as he should judge expedient, set out for Paris. On the way, fortune, at one stroke, well nigh crushed him and knew France together, for his horse fell on him, and he narrowly escaped with life. When he was partially recovered, he resumed his journey, pondering on means of rescue for the fading colony. A powerful protector must be had, a great name to shield the enterprise from assaults and intrigues of jealous rival interests. On reaching Paris he addressed himself to a Prince of the Blood, Charles de Bourbonne, Compte de Soissant, described New France, its resources and its boundless extent, urged the need of unfolding a mystery pregnant, perhaps, with results of the deepest moment, laid before him maps and memoirs, and begged him to become the guardian of this new world. The royal consent being obtained, the Compte de Soissant became Lieutenant General for the King in New France, with vice regal powers. These, in turn, he conferred upon Champlain, making him his Lieutenant, with full control over the trade infers at and above Quebec, and with power to associate with himself such persons as he saw fit, to aid in the exploration and settlement of the country. Scarcely was the commission drawn when the Compte de Soissant, attacked with fever, died, to the joy of the Breton and Norman traders, whose jubilation, however, found a speedy end. Henri de Bourbonne, Prince de Compte, First Prince of the Blood, assumed the vacant protectorship. He was a grandson of the gay and gallant Compte of the civil wars, was father of the great Compte, the youthful victor of Raccroy, and was husband of Charlotte de Montmorency, whose blonde beauties had fired the inflammable heart of Henry IV. To the unspeakable wrath of that keen lover, the prudent Condé fled with his bride, first to Brussels and then to Italy, nor did he return to France till the Regicide's knife had put his jealous fears to rest. After his return he began to intrigue against the court. He was a man of common abilities, greedy of money and power, and scarcely seeking even the decency of a pretext to cover his mean ambition. His chief honour, an honour somewhat equivocal, is, as Voltaire observes, to have been father of the great Condé. Busy with his intrigues, he cared little for colonies and discoveries, and his rank and power were his sole qualifications for his new post. In Champlain alone was the life of New France. By instinct and temperament he was more impelled to the adventurous toils of exploration than to the duller task of building colonies. The prophets of trade had value in his eyes only as a means to these ends, and settlements were important chiefly as a base of discovery. Two great objects eclipsed all others, to find a route to the Indies and to bring the heathen tribes into the embraces of the Church, since, while he cared little for their bodies, his solicitude for their souls knew no bounds. It was no part of his plan to establish an odious monopoly. He sought, rather to enlist the rival traders in his cause, and he now, in concurrence with Dumans, invited them to become shares in the traffic, under certain regulations, and on condition of aiding in the establishment and support of the colony. The merchants of Saint-Malo and Rouen accepted the terms and became members of the new company, but the intractable heretics of Rochelle were fractory in commerce as in religion kept aloof, and preferred the chances of an illicit trade. The prospects of New France were far from flattering, for little could be hoped from this unwilling league of selfish traders, each jealous of the rest. They gave the Prince of Conde large gratuities to secure his countenance and support. The hungry viceroy took them, and with these emoluments his interest in the colony ended. CHAPTER XII The arrangements just indicated were a work of time. In the summer of 1612 Champlain was forced to forego his yearly voyage to New France, nor even in the following spring, whereas labourers finished and the rival interests brought to harmony. Meanwhile incidents occurred destined to have no small influence on his movements. Three years before, after his second fight with the Iroquois, a young man of his company had boldly volunteered to join the Indians on their homeward journey and winter among them. Champlain gladly assented, and the following summer the adventure returned. Another young man, one Nicholas de Vignan, next offered himself, and he also, embarking in the Algonquin canoes, passed up the Ottawa and was seen no more for a twelve-month. In 1612 he reappeared in Paris, bringing a tale of wonders. Four, says Champlain, he was the most impudent liar that has been seen for many a day. He averred that at the sources of the Ottawa he found a great lake, that he had crossed it and discovered a river flowing northward, that he had descended this river and reached the shores of the sea, that here he had seen the wreck of an English ship whose crew, escaping to land, had been killed by the Indians, and that this sea was distant from Montreal only seventeen days by canoe. The clearness, consistency, and apparent simplicity of his story deceived Champlain, who had heard of a voyage of the English to the northern seas, coupled with rumours of his wreck and disaster, and was thus confirmed in his belief of Vignan's honesty. The Marachel de Brissac, the President Jeanine, and other persons of eminence about the court, greatly interested by these dexterous fabrications, urged Champlain to follow up without delay a discovery which promised results so important, while he, with the Pacific, Japan, the Spice Islands, and India stretching in flattering vista before his fancy, entered with eagerness on the chase of this illusion. Early in the spring of sixteen-thirteen the unwirried voyager crossed the Atlantic and sailed up to St. Lawrence. On Monday, the twenty-seventh of May, he left the island of St. Helen, opposite Montreal, with four Frenchmen, one of whom was Nicolas de Vignal, and one Indian in two small canoes. They passed the swift current at St. Anne's, crossed the lake of two mountains, and advanced up the Ottawa till the rapids of Carillon and the long so checked their course. So dense and tangled was the forest that they were forced to remain in the bed of the river, trailing their canoes along the bank with cords, or pushing them by main force of the current. Champlain's foot slipped. He fell in the rapids, two boulders against which he braced himself, saving him from being swept down, while the cord of the canoe, twisted round his hand, nearly severed it. At length they reached smoother water, and presently met fifteen canoes of friendly Indians. Champlain gave them the most awkward of his Frenchmen, and took one of their number in return, and exchanged greatly to his prophet. All day they plied their paddles, and when night came they made their campfire in the forest. He who now, when two centuries and a half are past, would see the evening bivouac of Champlain has but to encamp, with Indian guides on the upper waters of the same Ottawa, or on the borders of some lonely river of New Brunswick, or of Maine. Day dawned. The east glowed with tranquil fire, that pierced with eyes of flame the fir trees, whose jagged tops stood drawn in black against the burning heaven. Beneath, the glossy river slept in shadow, or spread far and wide in sheets of burnished bronze, and the white moon, paling in the face of day, hung like a disc of silver in the western sky. Now a fervid light touched the dead tops of the hemlock, and creeping downward bathed the mossy beard of the patriarchal cedar, unstirred in the breathless air. Now a fiercer spark beamed from the east, and now half risen on the site a dome of crimson fire, the sun blazed with floods of radiance across the awakened wilderness. The canoes were launched again, and the voyagers held their course. Soon the still surface was flecked with spots of foam, eyelets of froth floated by, tokens of some great convulsion. Then on their left the falling curtain of the riddle shone like a silver betwixt its bordering woods, and in front, white as a snowdrift, the cataracts of the Chaudière barred their way. They saw the unbridled river careering down its sheeted rocks, foaming and unfathomed chasms, wearying the solitude with the horse-out cry of its agony and rage. On the brink of the rocky basin, where plunging torrent boiled like a cauldron, and puffs of spray spraying out from its concussion like smoke from the throat of a cannon, Champlain's two Indians took their stand, and with a loud invocation threw tobacco into the foam, an offering to the local spirit, the Manitou of the cataract. They shouldered their canoes over the rocks and through the woods, then launched them again, and with toil and struggle made their amphibious way, pushing, dragging, lifting, paddling, shoving with poles, till when the evening sun poured its level rays across the quiet lake of the Chaudière, they landed, and made their camp on the verge of a woody island. Day by day brought a renewal of their toils. Hour by hour they moved prosperously at the long windings of the solitary stream, and then in quick succession rapid followed rapid, till the bed of the Ottawa seemed a slope of foam. Now, like a wall bristling at the top with woody eyelets, the falls of the chats faced them with the sheer plunge of their sixteen cataracts. Now they glided beneath overhanging cliffs, where, seeing but unseen, the crouched wildcat eyed them from the thicket. Now through the maze of water-girded rocks, which the white cedar and the spruce clasped with serpent-like roots, or among islands where old hemlocks darkened the water with deep green shadow. Here, too, the rock maple reared its verdant masses, the beach its glistening leaves and clean smooth stem, and behind, stiff and somber, rose the balsam fir. Here, in the tortuous channels, the muskrat swam and plunged, and the splashing wild duck dived beneath the alders, or among the red and matted roots of thirsty water-willows. Aloft, the white pine towered above a sea of verdure. Old fir trees, hoary and grim, shaggy with pendant mosses, leaned above the stream, and beneath, dead and submerged, some fallen oak thrust from the current its bare-bleached limbs, like the skeleton of a drowned giant. In the weedy coves stood the moose, neck deep in water to escape the flies, wading shoreward, with glistening sides as the canoes drew near, shaking his broad antlers and writhing his hideous nostril, as with clumsy trot he vanished in the woods. In these ancient wilds, to whosoever verdant antiquity the pyramids are young, and Nineveh a mushroom of yesterday, where the sage wanderer of oddesty, could he have urged his pilgrimage so far, would have surveyed the same grand and stern monotony, the same dark sweep of melancholy woods. Here, while New England was a solitude, and the settlers of Virginia scarcely dared venture inland beyond the sound of a cannon-shot, Champlain was planting on shores and islands the emblems of his faith. Of the pioneers of the North American forests his name stands foremost on the list. It was he who struck the deepest and boldest strokes into the heart of their pristine barbarism. At Chantilly, at Fontainebleau, Paris, in the cabinets of princes and of royalty itself, mingling with the proud vanities of the court, then lost from sight in the depths of Canada, the companion of savages, sharer of their toils, privations and battles, more hearty, patient and bold than they. Such for successive years were the alternations of this man's life. To follow on his trail once more. His Indians said that the rapids of the river above were impassable. Nicolas de Vignan affirmed the contrary, but from the first, Vignan had been found always in the wrong. His aim seems to have been to involve his leader in difficulties, and discussed him with a journey which must soon result in exposing the imposter which had occasioned it. Champlain took counsel of the Indians. The party left the river and entered the forest. We had a hard march, says Champlain. I carried for my share of the luggage three arc-booses, three paddles, my overcoat and a few bagatelles. My men carried a little more than I did, and suffered more from the mosquitoes than from their loads. After we had passed four small ponds and advanced two leagues and a half, we were so tired that we could go no farther, having eaten nothing but a little roasted fish for nearly twenty-four hours. So we stopped in a pleasant place enough by the edge of a pond, and lighted a fire to drive off the mosquitoes, which plagued us beyond all description, and at the same time we set our nets to catch a few fish. On the next day they fared still worse, for their way was through a pine forest where a tornado had passed, tearing up the trees and piling one upon another in a vast windfall, where boughs, roots and trunks were mixed in confusion. Sometimes they climbed over and sometimes crawled through these formidable barricades. Till, after an exhausting march, they reached the banks of Musgrat Lake, by the edge of which was an Indian settlement. This neighborhood was the seat of the principal Indian population of the river, and as the canoes advanced, unwanted signs of human life could be seen on the borders of the lake. Here was a rough clearing. The trees had been burned. There was a rude and desolate gap in the somber green of the pine forest. Dead trunks, blasted and black with fire, stood grimly upright amid the charred stumps and prostrate bodies of comrades half consumed. In the intervening spaces the soil had been feebly scratched with hose of wood or bone, and a crop of maize was growing, now some four inches high. The dwellings of these slovenly farmers, framed of poles covered with sheets of bark, were scattered here and there, singly or in groups, while their tenants were running to the shore in amazement. The chief, Nabacus, offered the calamant, then harangued the crowd. These white men must have fallen from the clouds. How else could they have reached us through the woods and rapids which even we find it hard to pass? The French chief can do anything. All that we have heard of him must be true. And they hastened to regale the hungry visitors with a rapast of fish. Champlain asked for guidance to the settlements above. It was readily granted. Escorted by his friendly hosts he advanced beyond the foot of Musgrat Lake, and landing saw the unaccustomed side of pathways through the forest. They led to the clearings and cabins of a chief named Tessonet, who, amazed at the apparition of the white strangers, exclaimed that he must be in a dream. Next the voyagers crossed to the neighboring island, then deeply wooded with pine, elm, and oak. Here were more desolate clearings, more rude cornfields embarked built on the cabins. Here, too, was a cemetery, which excited the wonder of Champlain, for the dead were better cared for than the living. Each grave was covered with a double row of pieces of wood, inclined like a roof till they crossed at the ridge, along which was laid a thick tablet of wood, meant apparently either to bind the hole together or to protect it from rain. At one end stood an upright tablet, or flattened post, rudely carved with an intended representation of the features of the deceased. If a chief the head was adorned with a plume. If a warrior there were figures near it of a shield, a lance, a war-club, and a bow and arrows. If a boy, of a small bow and one arrow, and if a woman or girl, of a kettle, an earthen pot, a wooden spoon, and a paddle. The hole was decorated with red and yellow paint, and beneath slept the departed, wrapped in a skin of robes, his earthly treasures about him, ready for use in the land of souls. Tessonaut was to give a toboggy, or solemn feast, in honour of Champlain, and the chiefs and elders of the island were invited. Runners were sent to summon the guests from neighbouring hamlets, and on the morrow Tessonaut's squaws swept his cabin for the festivity. Then Champlain and his Frenchmen were seated on skins in the place of honour, and the naked guests appeared in quick succession, each with his wooden dish and spoon, and each ejagulating his guttural salute as he stooped at the low door. The spacious cabin was full. The congregated wisdom and prowess of the nation sat expectant on the bare earth. Each long, bare arm thrust forth its dish in turn, as the host served out the banquet, in which, as courtesy enjoined, he himself was to have no share. First a mess of pounded maize, in which were boiled without salt, morsels of fish and dark scraps of meat. Then fish and flesh broiled on the embers, with a kettle of cold water from the river. Champlain, in wise distrust of Ottawa cookery, confined himself to the simpler and less doubtful viands. A few minutes and all alike had vanished. The kettles were empty. Then pipes were filled and touched with fire brought in by the squads, while the young men who had stood thronged about the entrance now modestly withdrew, and the door was closed for council. First the pipes were passed to Champlain. Then for a full half an hour the assembly smoked in silence. At length, when the fitting time was come, he addressed them in a speech in which he declared, that moved by affection for them, he visited their country to see its richness and its beauty, and to aid them in their wars, and he now begged them to furnish him with four canoes and eight men, to convey him to the country of the Nipissings, a tribe dwelling northward on the lake which bears their name. His audience looked grave, for they were but cold and jealous friends of the Nipissings. For a time they'd discoursed in murmuring tones among themselves, all smoking meanwhile with redoubled vigor. Then Tasonat, chief of these forest Republicans, rose and spoke in behalf of all. We always knew you for our best friend among the Frenchmen. We love you like our own children. But why did you break your word with us last year when we all went down to meet you at Montreal, to give you presents and go with you to war? You were not there, but other Frenchmen were there who abused us. We will never go again. As for the four canoes you shall have them if you insist upon it, but it grieves us to think of the hardships you must endure. The Nipissings have weak hearts. They are good for nothing in war, but they kill us with charms, and they poison us. Therefore we are in bad terms with them. They will kill you, too. Such was the pith of Tasonat's discourse, and at each clause the conclave responded in unison with an approving grunt. Champlain urged his petition, sought to relieve their tender scruples on his behalf, assured them that he was charm-proof and that he feared no hardships. At length he gained his point. The canoes and men were promised, and seeing himself as he thought on the highway to his phantom North Sea, he left his entertainers to their pipes, and with a light heart issued from the close and smoky den to breathe the fresh air of the afternoon. He visited the Indian fields, with their young crops of pumpkins, beans, and French peas, the last of novelty obtained from the traders. Here Thomas, the interpreter, soon joined him with accountants of ill-news. In the absence of Champlain the assembly had reconsidered their consent. The canoes were denied. With a troubled mind he hastened again to the hall of council, and addressed the naked senate in terms better suited to his insinuities than to their dignity. I thought you were men. I thought you would hold fast to your word. But I find you children without truth. You call yourselves my friends, yet you break faith with me. Still, I would not incommode you, and if you cannot give me four canoes, two will serve. The burden of the reply was, rocks, cataracts, and the wickedness of the nipissings. We will not give you the canoes, because we are afraid of losing you, they said. This young man, rejoined Champlain, pointing to Vignal, who sat by his side, has been to their country, and did not find the road or the people so bad as you have said. Nicholas, demanded Tessonot, did you say that you have been to the nipissings? The impostor sat mute for a time and then replied, Yes, I have been there. Hereupon an outcry broke from the assembly and they turned their eyes on him as camps, as if, says Champlain, they would have torn and eaten him. You are a liar, returned the unceremonious host. You know very well that you slept here among my children every night, and got up again every morning, and if you ever went to the nipissings, it must have been when you were asleep. How can you be so impudent as to lie to your chief, and so wicked as to risk his life among so many dangers? He ought to kill you with tortures worse than those with which we kill our enemies. Champlain urged him to reply, but he sat motionless and dumb. Then he led him from the cabin, and conjured him to declare if in truth he had seen this sea of the North. Vignal, with oaths, affirmed that all he had said was true. According to the council, Champlain repeated the imposter's story, how he had seen the sea, the wreck of an English ship, the heads of eighty Englishmen, and an English boy, prisoner among the Indians. At this an outcry rose louder than before, and the Indians turned in ire upon Vignal. You are a liar! Which way did you go? By what river? By what lakes? Who went with you? Vignal had made a map of his travels, which Champlain now produced, desiring him to explain it to his questioners, but his assurance failed him and he could not utter a word. Champlain was greatly agitated. His heart was in the enterprise, his reputation was in a measure at stake, and now, when he thought his triumph so near, he shrank from believing himself the sport of an impudent imposter. The council broke up. The Indians displeased in Mooney, and he on his part full of anxieties and doubts. I called Vignal to me in presence of his companions, he says. I told him that the time for deceiving me was ended, that he must tell me whether or not he had really seen the things he had told me of, that I had forgotten the past, but that if he continued to mislead me I would have him hanged without mercy. Vignal pondered for a moment, then fell on his knees, owned his treachery and begged for forgiveness. Champlain broke into a rage, and unable, as he says, to endure the sight of him, ordered him from his presence, and sent the interpreter after him to make further examination. Vanity, the love of notoriety, and the hope of reward, seemed to have been his inducements, for he had, in fact, spent a quiet winter in Tessanot's cabin, his nearest approach to the northern sea, and he had flattered himself that he might escape the necessity of guiding his commander to this pretended discovery. The Indians were somewhat exultant. Why did you not listen to chiefs and warriors instead of believing the lies of this fellow? And the council Champlain to have him killed at once adding, Give him to us, and we promise you that he shall never lie again. No motive remaining for farther advance, the party set out on their return, attended by a fleet of forty canoes bound to Montreal for trade. They passed the perilous rapids of the Caliment, and were one night encamped on an island, when an Indian, slumbering in an uneasy posture, was visited with a nightmare. He leaped up with a yell, screamed that somebody was killing him, and ran for refuge into the river. Instantly all his companions sprang to their feet, and, hearing infancy the Iroquois war-whoop, took to the water, splashing, diving, and wading up to their necks, in the blindness of their fright. Champlain and his Frenchman, roused at the noise, snatched their weapons and looked in vain for an enemy. The panic-stricken warriors, reassured at length, waited crestfallen on shore, and the whole ended in a lack. At the Chaudière a contribution of tobacco was collected on a wooden platter, and after a solemn harangue was thrown to the Guardian Manitou. On the seventeenth of June they approached Montreal, where the assembled traitors greeted them with discharges of small arms and cannon. Here, among the rest, was Champlain's lieutenant, Duparque, with his men, who had amused their leisure with hunting, and were reveling in a sylvan abundance, while their baffled chief, with worry of mind, fatigue of body, and a lenton diet of half-cooked fish, was grievously fallen away in flesh and strength. He kept his word with Divignon, left the scoundrel unpunished, bad farewell to the Indians, and promising to rejoin them the next year, embarked in one of the trading-ships for France. CHAPTER XIII of Pioneers of France in the New World, Part II SAMUEL CHAMPLANE AND HIS ASSOCIATES In New France, spiritual and temporal interests were inseparably blended, and, as we'll hear after appear, the conversion of the Indians was used as a means of commercial and political growth. But with the single-hearted founder of the colony, considerations of material advantage, though clearly recognized, were no less clearly subordinate. He would feign rescue from perdition of people living, as he says, like brute beasts, without faith, without law, without religion, without God. While the want of funds and the indifference of his merchant associates, who as yet did not fully see that their trade would find in the missions its surest ally, were threatening to wreck his benevolent schemes, he found a kindred spirit in his friend Hood, secretary to the King, and Comptroller General of the Saltworks of Bronnage. Near this town was a convent of recolette friars, some of whom were well known to Hool. To them he addressed himself, and several of the Brotherhood, inflamed, we are told, with charity, were eager to undertake the mission. But the recolettes, mendicants by profession, were as weak in resources as Champlain himself. He repaired to Paris, then filled with bishops, cardinals, and nobles, assembled for the state's general. Responding to his appeal, they subscribed fifteen-hundred levers for the purchase of vestments, candles, and ornaments for altars. The King gave letters patent in favor of the mission, and the Pope gave it his formal authorization. By this instrument the papacy in the person of Paul the Fifth virtually repudiated the action of the papacy in the person of Alexander the Sixth, who had proclaimed all America the exclusive property of Spain. The recolettes form a branch of the Great Franciscan Order, founded early in the thirteenth century by St. Francis of Assisi. St., Hero, or Mad Men, according to the point of view from which he is regarded, he belonged to an era of the Church when the tumult of invading heresies awakened in her defense a band of impassioned champions, widely different from the placid saints of an earlier age. He was very young when dreams and voices began to reveal to him his vocation, and kindle his high-wrought nature to seven-fold heat. Self-respect, natural affection, decency, became in his eyes but stumbling blocks and snares. He robbed his father to build a church, and like so many of the Roman Catholic saints, confounded filth with humility, exchanged clothes with beggars, and walked the streets of Assisi in rags amid the hootings of his townsmen. He vowed perpetual poverty and perpetual beggary, and in token of his renunciation of the world, stripped himself naked before the bishop of Assisi, and then begged of him in charity a peasant's mantle. Crowds gathered to his fervent and dramatic eloquence. His handful of disciples multiplied till Europe became thickly dotted with their convents. At the end of the eighteenth century the three orders of St. Francis numbered a hundred and fifteen thousand friars and twenty-eight thousand nuns. Four popes, forty-five cardinals, and forty-six canonized martyrs were enrolled on their record, besides about two thousand more who had shed their blood for the faith. Their missions embraced nearly all the known world, and in twenty-one there were, in Spanish America, alone five hundred Franciscan converts. In process of time the Franciscans had relaxed their ancient rigor, but much of their pristine spirit still subsisted in the Recolettes, a reformed branch of the order sometimes known as Franciscans of the strict observance. Four of their number were named for the mission of New France. Denis Germain, Jean Dolbyne, Joseph Le Carrant, and the lay brother Pasophique du Plessis. They packed their church ornaments, says Champlain, and we our luggage. All alike confessed their sins, and embarking at Hanfleur reached Quebec at the end of May sixteen-fifteen. Great was the perplexity of the Indians as the apostolic mendicons landed beneath the rock. Their garb was a form of that common to the brotherhood of St. Francis, consisting of a rude garment of coarse-gray cloth, girt at the waist with the knotted cord of the order, and furnished with a peaked hood to be drawn over the head. Their naked feet were shod with wooden sandals more than an inch thick. Their first care was to choose a site for their convent near the fortified dwellings and storehouses built by Champlain. This done they made an altar, and celebrated the first mass ever set in Canada. Dolbyne was the officiating priest. All New France kneeled on the bare earth around him, and cannon from the ship and the ramparts hailed the mystic right. Then, in imitation of the apostles, they took counsel together, and assigned to each his province in the vast field of their mission. To Le Coran were the Hurons, and to Dolbyne the Monteneys, while Jemais and Du Plessis were to remain for the present near Quebec. Dolbyne, full of zeal, set out for his post, and in the next winter tried to follow the roving hordes of Tadoussac to their frozen hunting grounds. He was not robust, and his eyes were weak. Lodged in a hut of birch bark, full of abominations, dogs, fleas, stench, and all uncleanness, he succumbed at length to the smoke, which had well nigh blinded him, forcing him to remain for several days with his eyes closed. After debating within himself whether God required of him the sacrifice of his sight, he solved his doubts with a negative, and returned to Quebec, only to depart again with opening spring on a tour so extensive that it brought him in contact with outlying bands of the Eskimo. Meanwhile Le Coran had long been absent on a more noteworthy mission. While his brethren were building their convent and garnishing their altar at Quebec, the ardent friar had hastened to the side of Montreal, then thronged with a savage concourse come down for the yearly trade. He mingled with them, studied their manners, tried to learn their languages, and when Champlain and Pontgrave arrived, declared his purpose of wintering in their villages. Dissuasion availed nothing. What, he demanded, are privations to him whose life is devoted to perpetual poverty, and who has no ambition but to serve God. The assembled Indians were more eager for temporal than for spiritual succor, and beset Champlain with clamours for aid against the Iroquois. He and Pontgrave were of one mind. The aid demanded must be given, and that from no motive of the hour, but in pursuance of a deliberate policy. It was evident that the innumerable tribes of New France, otherwise divided, were united in a common fear and hate of these formidable bands, who in the strength of their fivefold league spread havoc and desolation through all the surrounding wilds. It was the aim of Champlain, as of his successors, to persuade the threatened and endangered hordes to live at peace with each other, and to form against the common foe of the virtual league, of which the French colony would be the heart and head, and which would continually widen with the widening area of discovery. With French soldiers to fight their battles, French priests to baptize them, and French traders to supply their increasing wands, their dependents would be complete. They would become assured tributaries to the growth of New France. It was a triple alliance of soldier, priest, and trader. The soldier might be a roving knight, and the priest a martyr and a saint, but both alike were subserving the interests of that commerce, which formed the only solid basis of the colony. The scheme of English colonization made no account of the Indian tribes. In the scheme of French colonization they were all in all. In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood, the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth. The chiefs and warriors met in council, Algonquins of the Ottawa, and Hurons from the borders of the great freshwater sea. Champlain promised to join them with all the men at his command, while they, on their part, were to muster without delay twenty-five hundred warriors for an in-road into the country of the Iroquois. He descended at once to Quebec for needful preparation, but when after a short delay he returned to Montreal he found to his chagrin a solitude. The wild concourse had vanished, nothing remained but the skeleton poles of their huts, the smoke of their fires, and the refuse of their encampments. Impatient at his delay they had set out for their villages, and with them had gone Fr. Joseph Le Caron. Twelve Frenchmen, well-armed, had attended him. Summer was at its height, and as his canoes stole along the bosom of the glassy river, and he gazed about him on the tawny multitude whose fragile craft covered the water like swarms of gliding insects. He thought perhaps of his white-washed cell in the convent of Brogne, of his book, his table, his rosary, and all the narrow routine of that familiar life from which he had awakened to contrasts so startling. That his progress up the Ottawa was far from being an excursion of pleasure is attested by his letters, fragments of which have come down to us. It would be hard to tell you, he writes to a friend, how tired I was with paddling all day, with all my strength among the Indians, wading the rivers a hundred times and more, through the mud and over the sharp rocks that cut my feet, carrying the canoe and luggage through the woods to avoid the rapids and frightful cataracts, and half-starved all the while, for we had nothing to eat but a little sag and tight, a sort of porridge of water and pounded maize, of which they gave us a very small allowance every morning and night. But I must needs tell you what abundant consolation I found under all my troubles, for when one sees so many infidels needing nothing but a drop of water to make them children of God, one feels an inexpressible ardour to labour for their conversion, and sacrifice to it one's repose and life. Another recollect, Gabrielle Sagarde, followed the same route in similar company a few years later, and has left an account of his experience, of which Le Caron's was the counterpart. Sagarde reckons from eighty to a hundred waterfalls and rapids in the course of the journey, and the task of avoiding them by pushing through the woods was the harder for him because he saw fit to go barefoot, in imitation of our terrific father, St. Francis. We often came upon rocks, mud-holes and fallen trees, which we had to scramble over, and sometimes we must force our way with heads and hands through dense woods and thickets, without road or path. When the time came my Indians looked for a good place to pass the night. Some went for dry wood, others for poles to make a shed, others kindled a fire and hung the kettle to a stick stuck a slant in the ground, and others looked for two flat stones to bruise the Indian corn, of which they make sagamite. This sagamite was an extremely thin porridge, and those scraps of fish were now and then boiled in it. The fryer pined away daily on this weak and scanty fare, which was moreover made repulsive to him by the exceeding filthiness of the cookery. Nevertheless he was forced to disguise his feelings. One must always keep a smiling, modest, contented face, and now and then sing a hymn, both for his own consolation and to please and edify the savages, who take a singular pleasure in hearing us sing the praises of our God. Among all his trials none afflicted him so much as the flies and mosquitoes. If I had not kept my face wrapped in a cloth I am almost sure they would have blinded me, so pestiferous and poisonous are the bites of these little demons. They make one look like a leper, hideous to the sight. I confess that this is the worst martyrdom I suffered in this country. Hunger, thirst, weariness, and fever are nothing to it. These little beasts not only persecute you all day, but at night they get into your eyes and mouth, crawl under your clothes, or stick their long stings through them, and make such a noise that it distracts your attention, and prevents you from saying your prayers. He reckons three or four kinds of them, and adds that in the Monteney's country there is still another kind, so small that they can hardly be seen, but which bite like devil's imps. The sportsman who is bivouacked in the woods of Maine will at once recognize the minute tormentors there known as noceums. While through tribulations like these Le Coran made his way towards the scene of his apostleship, Champlain was following on his track. With two canoes, ten Indians, Etienne Broul as his interpreter, and another Frenchman, he pushed up the Ottawa till he reached the Algonquin villages which had formed the term of his former journey. He passed the two lakes of the Alumettes, and now for twenty miles the river stretched before him, straight as the beak can fly, deep, narrow and black, between its mountain shores. He passed the rapids of the Wacumes and the Caribou, the Rocher Captein, and the Deux Rivières, and reached at length the tributary waters of the Mataouan. He turned to the left, ascended this little stream forty miles or more, and crossing a portage track, well trodden, reached the margin of Lake Nipissing. The canoes were launched again, and glided by leafy shores and verdant islands till at length appeared signs of human life, and clusters of bark lodges, half hidden in the vastness of the woods. It was the village of an Algonquin band called the Nipissing, a race so beset with spirits, infested by demons, and abounding in magicians that the Jesuits afterwards stigmatized them as the sorcerers. In this questionable company, Champlain spent two days, feasted on fish, deer, and bears. Then descending to the outlet of the lake, he steered his canoes westward down the current of French River. Days passed, and no sign of man enlivened the rocky desolation. Hunger was pressing them hard, for the ten gluttonous Indians had devoured nearly all their provision for the voyage, and they were forced to subsist on the blueberries and wild raspberries that grew abundantly in the meager soil, when suddenly they encountered a troop of three hundred savages, whom, from their strange and startling mode of wearing their hair, Champlain named the Chavo Relev. Not one of our courtiers, he says, takes so much pains in dressing his locks. Here, however, their care of the toilette ended, for though tattooed on various parts of the body, painted and armed with bows, arrows, and shields of bison hide, they wore no clothing whatever. Savage, as was their aspect, they were busied in the Pacific task of gathering blueberries for their winter store. Their demeanor was friendly, and from them the Voyager learned that the great lake of the Hurons was close at hand. Now, far along the western sky was traced the watery line of that inland ocean, and first of white men except Friar Le Carrant, Champlain behold de Merduce, the fresh water sea of the Hurons. Before him, too far for sight, lay the spirit-haunted Manitolins, and southwards spread the vast bosom of the Georgian Bay. For more than a hundred miles his course was along its eastern shores, among Islets countless as the sea sands, and archipelago of rocks worn for ages by the wash of waves. He crossed being Inlet, Franklin Inlet, Perry Sound, and the wider Bay of Machadash, and seems to have landed at the Inlet now called Thunder Bay, at the entrance of the Bay of Machadash, and a little west of the harbor of Penetanguishin. An Indian trail led inland, through woods and thickets, across broad meadows, over brooks and along the skirts of green acolyvities. To the eye of Champlain, accustomed to the desolation he had left behind, it seemed a land of beauty and abundance. He reached at last a broad opening in the forest, with fields of maize, pumpkins ripening in the sun, patches of sunflowers, from the seeds of which the Indians made hair oil, and in the midst the Huron town of Autanacha. In all essential points it resembled that which Cartier, eighty years before, had seen at Montreal, the same triple palisade of crossed and intersected trunks, and the same long lodges of bark, each containing several families. Here, within an area of thirty or forty miles, was the seed of one of the most remarkable savage communities on the continent. By the Indian standard it was a mighty nation, yet the entire Huron population did not exceed that of a third or fourth class American city. To the south and southeast lay other tribes of kindred race and tongue, all stationary, all tillers of the soil, and all in a state of social advancement when compared with the roving bands of eastern Canada, the neutral nation west of the Niagara, and the Aries and Andisties in western New York and Pennsylvania, while from the Genesee eastward to the Hudson lay the banded tribes of the Iroquois, leading members of this potent family, deadly foes of their kindred, and at last their destroyers. In Champlain the Huron saw the champion who was to lead them to victory. There was bountiful feasting in his honor in the Great Lodge at Otinacha, and other welcome, too, was tendered, of which the Hurons were ever liberal, but which with all courtesy was declined by the virtuous Champlain. Next he went to Carmaron, a league distant, and then to Tonag-Nanchain and Antequananquihike. Till at length he reached Carhagwa, with its triple palisade thirty-five feet high. Here he found the Caron. The Indians, eager to do him honor, were building for him a bark lodge in the neighboring forest, fashioned like their own, but much smaller. In it the friar made an altar, garnished with those indispensable decorations which he had brought with him through all the vicissitudes of his painful journeying, and hither, night and day, came a curious multitude to listen to his annunciation of the new doctrine. It was a joyful hour when he saw Champlain approach his hermitage, and the two men embraced like brothers long sundered. The twelfth of August was a day ever more marked, with white in the friar's calendar. Arrayed in priestly vestments, he stood before his simple altar, behind him his little band of Christians, the twelve Frenchmen who had attended him, and the two who had followed Champlain. Here stood their devout and valiant chief, and at his side that pioneer of pioneers, Etienne Broul, the interpreter. The host was raised aloft, the worshippers kneeled. Then their rough voices joined in the hymn of praise, to Dayum Lodimus, and then a volley of their guns proclaimed the triumph of the Faith to the Oakes, the Manitous, and all the brood of anomalous devils who had reigned with undisputed sway in these wild realms of darkness. The brave friar, a true soldier of the church, had led her forlorn hope into the fastnesses of hell, and now, with contented heart, he might depart in peace, for he had said the first mass in the country of the Hurons.