per means of
egress except at either end of the long dwelling, and through the
chinks of the roof, so injured their eyes during the winter season
that many people lost their sight as they grew old.

[Footnote 30: They were almost completely exterminated by the Iroquois
confederacy between thirty and forty years after Champlain's visit.]

"Their life", writes Champlain, "is a miserable one in comparison
with our own, but they are happy amongst themselves, not having
experienced anything better, nor imagining that anything more
excellent could be found."

These Amerindians ordinarily ate two meals a day, and although
Champlain and his men fasted all through Lent, "in order to influence
them by our example", that was one of the practices they did _not_
copy from the French.

The Hurons of this period painted their faces black and red, mixing
the colours with oil made from sunflower seed, or with bears' fat. The
hair was carefully combed and oiled, and sometimes dyed a reddish
colour; it might be worn long or short, or only on one side of the
head. The women usually dressed theirs in one long plait. Sometimes it
was done up into a knot at the back of the head, bound with eelskin.
The men were usually dressed in deerskin breeches, with gaiters of
soft leather. The shoes ("Moccasins") were made of the skin of deer,
bears, or beavers. In addition to this the men in cold weather wore a
great cloak. The edges of these cloaks would often be decorated with
bands of brown and red colour alternating with strips of a
whitish-blue, and ornamented with bands of porcupine quills. These,
which were originally white or grey in colour, had been previously
dyed a fine scarlet with colouring matter from the root of the
bed-straw (_Galium tinctorum_). The women were loaded with necklaces
of violet or white shell beads, bracelets, ear-rings, and great
strings of beads falling below the waist. Sometimes they would have
plates of leather studded with shell beads and hanging over the back.

[Illustration: SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN; ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER]

In 1616 Champlain returned to France, but visited Quebec in 1617 and
1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his
explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of
consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife
between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of
the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But
i