bited traffic; but the Basques
proved refractory, declared that they would trade in spite of the King,
fired on Pontgrave with cannon and musketry, wounded him and two of his
men, and killed a third. They then boarded his vessel, and carried
away all his cannon, small arms, and ammunition, saying that they would
restore them when they had finished their trade and were ready to return
home.

Champlain found his comrade on shore, in a disabled condition. The
Basques, though still strong enough to make fight, were alarmed for the
consequences of their conduct, and anxious to come to terms. A peace,
therefore, was signed on board their vessel; all differences were
referred to the judgment of the French courts, harmony was restored, and
the choleric strangers betook themselves to catching whales.

This port of Tadoussac was long the centre of the Canadian fur-trade.
A desolation of barren mountains closes round it, betwixt whose ribs of
rugged granite, bristling with savins, birches, and firs, the Saguenay
rolls its gloomy waters from the northern wilderness. Centuries of
civilization have not tamed the wildness of the place; and still, in
grim repose, the mountains hold their guard around the waveless lake
that glistens in their shadow, and doubles, in its sullen mirror, crag,
precipice, and forest.

Near the brink of the cove or harbor where the vessels lay, and a little
below the mouth of a brook which formed one of the outlets of this small
lake, stood the remains of the wooden barrack built by Chauvin eight
years before. Above the brook were the lodges of an Indian camp,--stacks
of poles covered with birch-bark. They belonged to an Algonquin horde,
called Montagnais, denizens of surrounding wilds, and gatherers of their
only harvest,--skins of the moose, caribou, and bear; fur of the beaver,
marten, otter, fox, wild-cat, and lynx. Nor was this all, for there
were intermediate traders betwixt the French and the shivering bands who
roamed the weary stretch of stunted forest between the head-waters of
the Saguenay and Hudson's Bay. Indefatigable canoe-men, in their
birchen vessels, light as eggshells, they threaded the devious tracks of
countless rippling streams, shady by-ways of the forest, where the wild
duck scarcely finds depth to swim; then descended to their mart along
those scenes of picturesque yet dreary grandeur which steam has made
familiar to modern tourists. With slowly moving paddles they glided
beneath t