cholas de Vignau, who had come to Paris direct from the
Ottawa valley, that while among the Algonquin Indians he had gone with
a party to the north where they had found a salt water sea, on whose
shores were the remains {78} of an English ship. The Indians had also,
according to Vignau, brought back an English lad, whom they intended to
present to Champlain when he made his promised visit to the Upper
Ottawa.

Champlain probably thought he was at last to realise the dream of his
life. Accompanied by Vignau, four other Frenchmen, and an Indian
guide, he ascended the great river, with its numerous lakes, cataracts,
and islets. He saw the beautiful fall to which ever since has been
given the name of Rideau--a name also extended to the river, whose
waters make the descent at this point--on account of its striking
resemblance to a white curtain. Next he looked into the deep chasm of
mist, foam, and raging waters, which the Indians called Asticou or
Cauldron (Chaudiere), on whose sides and adjacent islets, then thickly
wooded, now stand great mills where the electric light flashes amid the
long steel saws as they cut into the huge pine logs which the forests
of the Ottawa yearly contribute to the commerce and wealth of Canada.
At the Chaudiere the Indians evoked the spirits of the waters, and
offered them gifts of tobacco if they would ward off misfortune. The
expedition then passed up the noble expansion of the river known as the
Chats, and saw other lakes and cataracts that gave variety and grandeur
to the scenery of the river of the Algonquins, as it was then called,
and reached at last, after a difficult portage, the country around
Allumette lake, where Nicholas de Vignau had passed the previous
winter. Two hundred and fifty-four years later, on an August day, a
farmer unearthed on this old {79} portage route in the district of
North Renfrew, an old brass astrolabe of Paris make, dated 1603; the
instrument used in those distant days for taking astronomical
observations and ascertaining the latitude. No doubt it had belonged
to Champlain, who lost it on this very portage by way of Muskrat and
Mud lakes, as from this place he ceases to give us the correct
latitudes which he had previously been able to do.

[Illustration: Champlain's lost astrolabe.]

Among the Algonquin Indians of this district, who lived in rudely-built
bark cabins or camps, and were hunters as well as cultivators of the
soil, he soon found out t