ious experience of being the first to gaze
with European eyes upon a lake fairer and grander than his own France
could show.

Four years elapsed before Champlain was enabled to plunge once more
into the depths of the forest--this time only to meet with the severest
disappointment of his life. Much has been said already regarding his
ambition to discover a short route to Cathay. This was the great prize
for which he would have sacrificed everything save loyalty to the king
and duty to the church. For a moment he seemed on the point of gaining
it. Then the truth was brutally disclosed, and he found that he had been
wilfully deceived by an impostor.

It was a feature of Champlain's policy that from time to time French
youths should spend the winter with the Indians--hunting with them,
living in their settlements, exploring their country, and learning their
language. Of Frenchmen thus trained to woodcraft during Champlain's
lifetime the most notable were Etienne Brule, Nicolas Vignau, Nicolas
Marsolet, and Jean Nicolet. Unfortunately the three first did not leave
an unclouded record. Brule, after becoming a most accomplished guide,
turned traitor and aided the English in 1629. Champlain accuses Marsolet
of a like disloyalty. [Footnote: Marsolet's defence was that he acted
under constraint.] Vignau, with more imagination, stands on the roll of
fame as a frank impostor.

Champlain, as we have seen, spent the whole of 1612 in France, and it
was at this time that Vignau appeared in Paris with a tale which could
not but kindle excitement in the heart of an explorer. The basis of fact
was that Vignau had undoubtedly passed the preceding winter with the
Algonquins on the Ottawa. The fable which was built upon this fact can
best be told in Champlain's own words.

He reported to me, on his return to Paris in 1612,
that he had seen the North Sea; that the river of the
Algonquins [the Ottawa] came from a lake which emptied
into it; and that in seventeen days one could go from
the Falls of St Louis to this sea and back again; that
he had seen the wreck and debris of an English ship
that had been wrecked, on board of which were eighty
men who had escaped to the shore, and whom the savages
killed because the English endeavoured to take from
them by force their Indian corn and other necessaries
of life; and that he had seen the scalps which these
savages had flayed off, according to their custom,