He Discovers and Names Lake Champlain

Champlain, regarding the Iroquois in northern New York as inimical to his colony because it was in the bosom of the Huron nation who were their enemies, allied himself to the Hurons and went out with them upon the war-path. In the summer of 1609, he, with a boat's crew, went with the Indian warriors up the Sorel or Richelieu River to the Falls of Chambly, where he left his boat and the crew, and with only two men pushed on in a canoe until he discovered a great lake between two distant mountain ranges-the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks. He gave his name to the sheet of water, which is a beautiful, appropriate, and eternal monument to the memory of the mariner. On its shores he and his Indian allies had a fight with their enemies, and then returned to Quebec with fifty scalps as trophies of war. In September of that year Champlain returned to France, when he published an account of Canada and of his adventures.

The following spring Champlain returned, stopping at Tadousac, where he borrowed fifty warriors from a chief, with whom he penetrated the country to Lake Champlain to fight the enemies of the Hurons. He was defeated and wounded. So bad was his hurt that when he reached Quebec he found it necessary to return to France to have medical treatment. The aspect of affairs there was changed. The dagger of the fanatic Francois Ravaillac had killed his king; the fortune of De Monts was so much diminished that he could not continue the settlement at Montreal nor foster that at Quebec, and it appeared as if there were to be another ending of French settlements in America. At that moment the queen-regent, by a judicious act, saved the colony. She appointed Charles of Bourbon nominal governor of Canada, and the prince commissioned Champlain his lieutenant with large powers. So strengthened, the latter returned in 1612, and engaged vigorously in wars and explorations. Three years later he invited some Jesuit Fathers to the St. Lawrence, who accompanied him in expeditions of discovery extending up the Ottawa River and westward to Lake Huron. Turning east-ward, they traversed the wilderness to Lake Ontario, and exploring that magnificent sheet of water its whole length, and the St. Lawrence to a point below Montreal, they returned to Quebec.

With the vision of a statesman, Champlain saw that the country with which he had made himself acquainted was fitted to become the seat of a magnificent colonial empire of Frenchmen, and he resolved to do all in his power to lay the solid foundations of such an empire. He went home, and in 1620-the same year when the London Company planted a permanent settlement in New England-he returned to Canada vested with the authority of governor, and taking with him his family and other emigrants with their families. He had seen the amazing influence of the Jesuit fathers over the Indian mind. He had also perceived that an alliance with the red men would be essential in building up and making permanent his future empire. To make them good allies, it would be necessary to Christianize the savages; so he invited more Jesuits to come. He had, very soon, as coadjutors, fifteen Jesuit priests and a considerable number of laymen. A college was established at Quebec for the instruction of the children of the Hurons in civilized modes of living, the French language, and the theology of the Roman Catholic Church. These Jesuits were peculiarly the men for the work;-sagacious, far-seeing, politic, zealous, obedient, devoted, industrious, persevering, long-suffering and self-sacrificing-men of the world who could adapt themselves to every condition and plane of life, from the pitiful suppliant as a beggar to the haughty bearing of a king. They worked with untiring energy and signal success for religion and the state.

So was wisely laid, by Samuel Champlain, the foundation-stone of the French empire in America; a political structure which always displayed as its chief source of strength a firm alliance with the Indians cemented by the religious teachings of the Jesuits, which made the dusky tribes and the palefaces, to a remarkable extent, one in the Christian faith. So were secured those alliances in emergencies, between the French and Indians in America, already alluded to, which frequently gave the English colonists much and serious trouble.

Whilst the other Western nations of Europe were acquiring glory and solid territorial possessions by discoveries in America, Holland, then the greatest maritime nation on the earth, was quietly winning the gains of profitable commerce by sending her uncouth commercial marine over beaten ocean tracks, quite indifferent to the exciting day-dreams of fabulous wealth concealed in the bosom of the western continent, which so dazzled other people. But Holland, too, at this period of commercial activity, became a partner with others in making discoveries and settlements in America, in spite of her indifference. The story with its preface runs thus: