n 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his
wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent
commercial dispute between fur-trading companies he tried to compose
the quarrel between the Iroquois and the Algonkins, and brought about
a truce which lasted till 1627.

In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada. A French fleet was
defeated and captured in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in the
following year Champlain, having been obliged to surrender Quebec (he
had only sixteen soldiers as a garrison, owing to lack of food),
voyaged to England more or less as a prisoner of state in the summer
of 1629. He found, on arriving there, that the cession of Quebec was
null and void, peace having been concluded between Britain and France
two months before the cession. Charles I remained true to his compact
with Louis XIII, and Quebec and Nova Scotia were restored to French
keeping. In 1633 Champlain returned to Canada as Governor, bringing
with him a considerable number of French colonists. _It is from 1633
that the real French colonization of Canada begins_: hitherto there
had been only one family of settlers in the fixed sense of the word;
the other Frenchmen were fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries. But
Champlain only lived two years after his triumphant return, and died
at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635.

His character has been so well summed up by Dr. S.E. Dawson, in his
admirable book on the _Story of the St. Lawrence Basin_, that I cannot
do better than quote his words:

"Champlain was as much at home in the brilliant court of France as in
a wigwam on a Canadian lake, as patient and politic with a wild band
of savages on Lake Huron as with a crowd of grasping traders in St.
Malo or Dieppe. Always calm, always unselfish, always depending on
God, in whom he believed and trusted, and thinking of France, which he
loved, this single-hearted man resolutely followed the path of his
duty under all circumstances; never looking for ease or asking for
profit, loved by the wild people of the forest, respected by the
courtiers of the king, and trusted by the close-fisted merchants of
the maritime cities of France."

CHAPTER V

After Champlain: from Montreal to the Mississippi

A very remarkable series of further explorations were carried out as
the indirect result of Champlain's work. In 1610 he had allowed a
French boy of about eighteen years of age, named ETIENNE BRULE, to
v