en opposing heights and
which the Indians called Kebec ("The Narrows"), seemed an ideal situation
for a stronghold, being indeed a natural fortress. On this spot, between
the water and the cliffs, where the Lower Town now stands, Champlain, in
1608, founded the city of Quebec. Its beginnings were modest
indeed--three wooden buildings containing quarters for the leader and his
men, a large storehouse, and a fort with two or three small cannon
commanding the river.

{124}

The Basques, all this time, were sullenly brooding over the wrong which
they conceived had been done them. One day Champlain was secretly
informed of a plot among his men to murder him and deliver Quebec into
their hands. He acted with his usual cool determination. Through the
agency of the man who had betrayed them, the four ringleaders were lured
on board a small vessel with a promise of enjoying some wine which was
said to have been sent from Tadoussac by their friends, the Basques.
They were seized, and the arch-conspirator was immediately hanged, while
the other three were taken by Pontgrave back to France, where they were
sentenced to the gallows. After these prompt measures Champlain had no
more trouble with his men.

Now he was left with twenty-eight men to hold Quebec through the winter.
One would think that the cruel sufferings endured by Carder on the same
spot, seventy-three years earlier, would have intimidated him. But he
was made of stern stuff. Soon the rigors of a Canadian winter settled
down on the little post. For neighbors the Frenchmen had only a band of
Indians, half-starving and wholly wretched, as was the usual {125} winter
condition of the roving Algonquins, who never tilled the soil or made
sufficient provision against the cold. The French often gave them food
which they needed sorely. Champlain writes of seeing some miserable
wretches seize the carcass of a dog which had lain for months on the
snow, break it up, thaw, and eat it.

It proved a fearful winter. The scurvy raged among the Frenchmen, and
only eight, half of them sick, remained alive out of the twenty-eight.
Thus this first winter at Quebec makes the first winter of the Pilgrims
at Plymouth seem, by comparison, almost a mild experience.

With the early summer Pontgrave was back from France, and now Champlain,
strenuous as ever, determined on carrying out his daring project of
exploration, in the hope of finding a route to China. His plan was to
ma