ble to do very much for the colony. The indefatigable
lieutenant-governor, true to his trust, succeeded in building a little
fort in 1634 at the mouth of the St. Maurice, and founded the present
city of Three Rivers, as a bulwark against the Iroquois. It had,
however, been for years a trading place, where Brother Du Plessis spent
some time in instructing the Indian children and people in the Catholic
religion, and was instrumental in preventing a rising of the Montagnais
Indians who had become discontented and proposed to destroy the French
settlements.

On Christmas Day, 1635, Champlain died from a paralytic stroke in the
fort, dominating the great river by whose banks he had toiled and
struggled for so many years as a faithful servant of his king and
country. Father Le Jeune pronounced the eulogy over his grave, the
exact site of which is even now a matter of dispute.

What had the patient and courageous Frenchman of Brouage accomplished
during the years--nearly three decades--since he landed at the foot of
Cape Diamond? On the verge of the heights a little fort of logs and a
chateau of masonry, a few clumsy and wretched buildings on the point
below, a cottage and clearing of the first Canadian farmer Hebert, the
ruins of the Recollet convent and the mission house of the Jesuits on
the St. Charles, the chapel of Notre-Dame de Recouvrance, which he had
built close to the fort to commemorate the restoration of {91} Quebec
to the French, the stone manor-house of the first seignior of Canada,
Robert Giffard of Beauport, a post at Tadousac and another at Three
Rivers, perhaps two hundred Frenchmen in the whole valley. These were
the only visible signs of French dominion on the banks of the St.
Lawrence, when the cold blasts of winter sighed Champlain's requiem on
the heights whence his fancy had so often carried him to Cathay. The
results look small when we think of the patience and energy shown by
the great man whose aspirations took so ambitious and hopeful a range.
It is evident by the last map he drew of the country, that he had some
idea of the existence of a great lake beyond Lake Huron, and of the
Niagara Falls, though he had seen neither. He died, however, ignorant
of the magnitude, number, and position of the western lakes, and still
deluded by visions, as others after him, of a road to Asia. No one,
however, will deny that he was made of the heroic mould from which come
founders of states, and the Jesuit