gena, where there was a good port, sheltered from all winds. Upon
his return to Havana Champlain met his general and spent four months in
collecting valuable information relating to the interesting island of
Cuba. From Havana he proceeded past the Bahama channel, approached
Bermuda Island, Terceira, one of the Azores, and sighted Cape St.
Vincent, where he captured two armed English vessels, which were taken
to Seville.

Champlain returned to France in March, 1601, having been absent on his
first voyage for a period of two years and two months, during which time
he collected much valuable information. He also published a small
volume containing plans, maps and engravings, fairly well executed for
the time, and now exceedingly scarce. The manuscript of this volume is
still preserved; it covers one hundred and fifteen pages with sixty-two
drawings, coloured and surrounded with blue and yellow lines. It appears
to have been written between the years 1601 and 1603.[2]

The first voyage of Champlain across the Atlantic, though important from
a military standpoint, did not suffice to satisfy the ambition of a man
whose thoughts were bent upon discovery and colonization. Champlain was
a navigator by instinct, and in his writings he gave to nautical science
the first place.

"Of all the most useful and excellent arts," he writes, "that of
navigation has always seemed to me to occupy the first place. For the
more hazardous it is, the greater the perils and losses by which it is
attended, so much the more is it esteemed and exalted above all others,
being wholly unsuited to the timid and irresolute. By this art we obtain
a knowledge of different countries, regions and realms. By it we
attract and bring to our own land all kinds of riches; by it the
idolatry of Paganism is overthrown and Christianity proclaimed
throughout all the regions of the earth. This is the art which won my
love in my early years and induced me to expose myself almost all my
life to the impetuous waves of the ocean, and led me to explore the
coasts of a portion of America, especially those of New France, where I
have always desired to see the lily flourish, together with the only
religion, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman."

After his return to France in the year 1601, Champlain received a
pension, together with the appointment of geographer to the king. Pierre
de Chauvin, Sieur de Tontuit, who had unsuccessfully endeavoured to
establish a settlement at Tad