amplain in command. Champlain
had succeeded in binding the company of merchants with new and more
stringent engagements; and, in the vain belief that these might not be
wholly broken, he began to conceive fresh hopes for the colony. In this
faith he embarked with his wife for Quebec in the spring of 1620; and,
as the boat drew near the landing, the cannon welcomed her to the rock
of her banishment. The buildings were falling to ruin; rain entered on
all sides; the courtyard, says Champlain, was as squalid and dilapidated
as a grange pillaged by soldiers. Madame de Champlain was still very
young. If the Ursuline tradition is to be trusted, the Indians, amazed
at her beauty and touched by her gentleness, would have worshipped her
as a divinity. Her husband had married her at the age of twelve when,
to his horror, he presently discovered that she was infected with the
heresies of her father, a disguised Huguenot. He addressed himself at
once to her conversion, and his pious efforts were something more than
successful. During the four years which she passed in Canada, her zeal,
it is true, was chiefly exercised in admonishing Indian squaws and
catechising their children; but, on her return to France, nothing would
content her but to become a nun. Champlain refused; but, as she was
childless, he at length consented to a virtual though not formal
separation. After his death she gained her wish, became an Ursuline nun,
founded a convent of that order at Meaux, and died with a reputation
almost saintly.

At Quebec, matters grew from bad to worse. The few emigrants, with
no inducement to labor, fell into a lazy apathy, lounging about the
trading-houses, gaming, drinking when drink could be had, or roving
into the woods on vagabond hunting excursions. The Indians could not be
trusted. In the year 1617 they had murdered two men near the end of the
Island of Orleans. Frightened at what they had done, and incited perhaps
by other causes, the Montagnais and their kindred bands mustered at
Three Rivers to the number of eight hundred, resolved to destroy the
French. The secret was betrayed; and the childish multitude, naked and
famishing, became suppliants to their intended victims for the means
of life. The French, themselves at the point of starvation, could give
little or nothing. An enemy far more formidable awaited them; and now
were seen the fruits of Champlain's intermeddling in Indian wars. In
the summer of 1622, the Iroquois d