and sell Quebec to the Spaniards and the Basques. Fortunately the
fidelity of his pilot saved Champlain from assassination. Warning
reached him in time, and he dealt fearlessly and rigorously with the
mutinous crew. The four ringleaders were decoyed on board a pinnace
from Tadousac, and seized and put in irons. The body of the chief
conspirator swung next morning from the cross-trees, and his three
companions were sent back to the galleys of France. A free pardon for
the minor malcontents secured their loyalty from that time forward.

In September, Pontgrave set sail for France, and Champlain and his
twenty-eight companions made ready for the winter. Frost and snow came
early that year, and a devastating scurvy invaded the Habitation. The
improvident Montagnais huddled in their birch tepees about the fort,
raving for food, and perishing with disease; while of the twenty-eight
Frenchmen there were only eight despairing survivors to greet the
returning spring. On the 5th of June, however, Pontgrave's ship again
arrived at Quebec, to the joy of Champlain and his stricken
companions.

Summer warmed their enthusiasm anew, and the dauntless explorer now
thought only of pressing on westward to Cathay. To further this
project, he consented to ally himself with the Hurons and Algonquins
in an attack upon the Iroquois, and for several days their dusky
allies swarmed in and around Quebec. At length, towards the end of
June, the war-party set out. Champlain embarked in a shallop with
eleven men, armed with arquebuse and match-lock, sword and
breast-plate; and the painted, shrilling foresters swarmed up the
river in their bark canoes. From the St. Lawrence they passed into the
Iroquois River.[4]

After destroying one of the Mohawk towns, the victorious raiders
returned to Quebec. Champlain, "the man with the iron breast," had
cemented his alliance with the northern tribes, and from this time
forth Quebec became the great emporium for the fur trade of the
continent.

[Footnote 4: Now the Richelieu.]

In 1613 Champlain's enthusiasm was kindled by the tale of one Nicolas
de Vignau, who claimed to have traced the Ottawa to its source in a
great lake, which also emptied itself through a northern river into an
unknown sea. Champlain set off with Vignau and three others to
establish this new route to Cathay. In two birch canoes they proceeded
up the St. Lawrence and into the rushing Ottawa. Portaging around the
seething Chaudiere,