s Missionaries set
themselves vigorously to the work of christianizing the heathen, while
Champlain himself industriously began to fight them. He extended the
olive branch from his left hand, and stabbed vigorously with a sword in
his right hand. The Missionaries established churches, or rather the
cross, from the head waters of the Saguenay to Lake Nepissing.
Champlain battled the Iroquois from Mont Royal to Nepissing. Rather he
_would_ have done so. He did not find them until he reached, overland
and in canoes, Lake Huron, the superior character of the land in that
neighbourhood attracting his particular attention. He found his "enemy"
entrenched by "four successive palisades of fallen trees," says Smith,
"enclosing a piece of ground containing a pond, with every other
requisite for Indian warfare"--a very Sebastopol, upon which Champlain
discharged his fire-arms, driving the Iroquois back to their camp. The
place was, however, impregnable, and the siege was reluctantly raised.
The Algonquins would only fight as they pleased. They were sadly in
want of a head. They would not use fire-arms, but "preferred firing
their arrows against the strong wooden defences." Champlain was twice
wounded in the leg, and his allies, making the non-arrival of
reinforcements an excuse, retreated. Champlain insisted upon going
home, but transport was wanting, and he was compelled to winter, as
best he could, in a desolate region, with his discomfitted allies. In
the following year he got away, and made haste down his Black Sea of
Ontario, to his Golden Horn at Tadousac, from thence, on the 10th of
Sept., 1616, returning to his native country to find his partner, the
Prince of Conde, in disgrace and in confinement, for what the historian
knows not. The Prince had possibly been playing Hudson, for we find
that the Marshal de Themines was prevailed upon to accept the office,
on condition of sharing the emoluments. But he too became involved in
"controversy with the merchants," and after only two years presidency
of the Company, resigned, when the Duke de Montmorenci obtained the
Viceroyalty from Conde, for eleven thousand crowns. The Duke was Lord
High Admiral of France, and Champlain was exceedingly glad. Another new
colonizing company was formed. Seventy-seven artisans, farmers,
physicians, or gentlemen, three friars, horses, cows, sheep, seed-corn,
and arms were collected at Rochelle for exportation in 1619. But the
laymen, partly Protesta