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Updated: August 11, 2024
The voyage was brief and pleasant to Champlain's party, but Cananée's ship was captured by the Turks, and its commander was put to a cruel death. He made a single voyage to Quebec, and he had on board Jean Baptiste Guers, delegate of the Duke of Montmorency. Dumé was born at St. Gomer de Fly, Beauvais.
On the other side, embowered in ancient trees that had escaped the axe of Champlain's hardy followers, stood the old-fashioned Monastery of the Recollets, with its high belfry and broad shady porch, where the monks in gray gowns and sandals sat in summer, reading their breviaries or exchanging salutations with the passers-by, who always had a kind greeting for the brothers of St. Francis.
The full plan required that Pontgravé should spend the winter in Canada, while Champlain, after his summer campaign, was to return to France with a report of his explorations. The Indians had stated that the route to the land of the Iroquois was easy, and Champlain's original design was to proceed in a shallop capable of carrying twenty Frenchmen.
To give only one example of these strange recruitings, let us examine the composition of the great family of the Iroquois in Champlain's time. It was a collection of disbanded tribes, who had belonged to the Hurons, to the Tionnontatés, to the Neutral, to the Eries and du Feu tribes.
He discovered that this river formed the outlet of the waters of a beautiful lake, which he was the first of Europeans to behold, and which he called "Lake Champlain," after his own name. He was now in parts frequented by the Iroquois. According to Champlain's description it was a region abounding in game, fish, beavers, bears, and other wild animals.
Champlain's successors in the office of governor, Montmagny, Ailleboust, Lauzon, Argenson, Avaugour, had no military force adequate to the task of meeting and crushing these formidable foes. Year after year the wretched colony maintained its struggle for existence amidst deadly perils, receiving almost no help from France, and to all appearance doomed to destruction.
Before the ships sailed in 1603 Chauvin had died, and De Chastes at once took his place as the central figure in the group of those to whom a new monopoly had just been conceded. We are now on the threshold of Champlain's career, but only on the threshold.
The edition of Champlain's works, by the Abbe Laverdiere for some years librarian of Laval, is a most creditable example of critical acumen and typographical skill. In the same field there is much yet to be explored by the zealous antiquarian who has the patience to delve among the accumulations of matter that are hidden in Canadian and European archives.
The secret was betrayed; and the childish multitude, naked and famishing, became suppliants to their intended victims for the means of life. The French, themselves at the point of starvation, could give little or nothing. An enemy far more formidable awaited them; and now were seen the fruits of Champlain's intermeddling in Indian wars.
He had not Champlain's enthusiasm there was much to do for France, and that land had always to be on the defensive with England. Would it not be so here in the years to come? And the Indians would be a continual menace. But there was a whole continent to convert, to civilize. He went back to the times of Charlemagne and the struggles that had brought out a glorious France.
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