--Fight with Free-traders at
Tadoussac.--The Founding of Quebec.--The First Bitter Winter.--Champlain
starts on an Exploration.--Discovery of Lake Champlain.--Fight with a
Band of Iroquois.--Its Unfortunate Consequences.--Another Fight with
Iroquois.--Montreal founded.--Champlain's most Important
Exploration.--Lake Huron discovered.--A Deer Drive.--Defeated by
Iroquois.--Champlain lost in the Woods.--His Closing Years and Death.

Hitherto Champlain has appeared at a disadvantage, because he was in a
subordinate capacity. Now we shall see his genius shine, because he is
in command.

In 1608 he returned to America, not, however, to Nova Scotia, but to the
St. Lawrence. Three motives chiefly actuated him. The first was the
unquenchable desire to find a water-way through our continent to China.
When, in 1603, he {120} explored the St. Lawrence as far as the rapids
beyond Montreal, what he heard from the Indians about the great inland
seas created in his mind a strong conviction that through them was a
passage to the Pacific, such as the early explorers, notably Henry Hudson
(See "The World's Discoverers," p. 328), believed to exist.

The next motive was exceedingly practical. Champlain was deeply
impressed with the need of planting strongholds on the great streams
draining the vast fur-yielding region, so as to shut out intruders and
secure the precious traffic to his countrymen. Let France, he argued,
plant herself boldly and strongly on the St. Lawrence, that great highway
for the savage's canoe and the white man's ship, and she would control
the fur-trade.

The other idea active in his mind was an earnest desire for the
conversion of the Indians. It is undeniable that France was genuinely
interested in christianizing the natives of America. Some of the most
heroic spirits who came to our country came with that object in view, and
Champlain was too devoted a Catholic not to share the Church's concern on
this point.

So he came out, in the spring of 1608, in {121} command of a vessel
furnished by the Sieur de Monts for exploration and settlement. When he
reached the desolate trading-post of Tadoussac,[1] an incident occurred
that illustrates the reluctance of men to submit to curtailment of their
natural rights. If it was hard for men in France to submit patiently to
being shut out of a lucrative business by the government's granting the
sole right to particular persons, how far more difficult must it have