were
brave, but the white man's gun was too much for them, and when two of
their chiefs fell dead, pierced by a shot from Champlain's weapon, they
turned and fled. The French thus won the friendship of the Canadian
Indians and the undying hatred of the Five Nations, and the latter
therefore stood faithfully by first the Dutch, and later the English in
the establishment of their power at Manhattan.

Quebec continued for many years to be hardly more than a military post.
At the time of Champlain's death, in 1635, there was, says Winsor, a
fortress with a few small guns on the cliffs of Cape Diamond. Along the
foot of the precipice was a row of unsightly and unsubstantial buildings,
where the scant population lived, carried on their few handicrafts, and
stored their winter provisions. It was a motley crowd which, in the
dreary days, sheltered itself here from the cold blasts that blew along
the river channel. There was the military officer, who sought to give
some color to the scene in showing as much of his brilliant garb as the
cloak which shielded him from the wind would permit. The priest went from
house to house with his looped hat. The lounging hunter preferred for the
most part to tell his story within doors. Occasionally you could mark a
stray savage who had come to the settlement for food. Such characters as
these, and the lazy laborers taking a season of rest after the summer's
traffic, would be grouped in the narrow street beneath the precipice
whenever the wintry sun gave more than its usual warmth at mid-day. It
was hardly a scene to inspire confidence in the future. It was not the
beginning of empire. If one climbed the path leading to the top of the
rugged slope he could see a single cottage that looked as if a settler
had come to stay. There were cattle-sheds and signs of thrift in its
garden plot. If Champlain had had other colonists like the man who built
this house and marked out this farmstead, he might have died with the
hope that New France had been planted in this great valley on the basis
of domestic life. The widow of this genuine settler, Hebert, still
occupied the house at the time when Champlain died, and they point out to
you now in the upper town the spot where this one early householder of
Quebec made his little struggle to instil a proper spirit of colonization
into a crowd of barterers and adventurers. From this upper level the
visitor at this time might have glanced across the valley of the