ed me and troubled me exceedingly," he tells us, "to be obliged
to return without having seen so great a lake, full of fair islands
and bordered with the fine countries which they had described to me."
He could not bear to give up the exploration into the heart of a land
unvisited by white men. So, sending back his party, accompanied only
by two Frenchmen as brave as himself, he stepped into an Indian canoe
to be carried round the rapids and so continue his perilous
journey--perilous, indeed, for bands of hostile natives lurked in the
primeval forests that clothed the river-banks in dense masses.

As they advanced the river widened out; the Indian canoes carried them
safely over the broad stream shimmering in the summer sun till they
came to a great silent lake over one hundred miles long, hitherto
unexplored. The beauty of the new country is described with enthusiasm
by the delighted explorer, but they were now in the Mohawk country
and progress was fraught with danger. They travelled only by night
and lay hidden by day in the depth of the forest, till they had reached
the far end of the lake, named Lake Champlain after its discoverer.
They were near the rocky promontory where Fort Ticonderoga was
afterwards built, when they met a party of Iroquois; war-cries pealed
across the waters of the lake, and by daybreak battle could no longer
be averted. Champlain and his two companions, in doublet and hose,
buckled on their breastplates, cuisses of steel and plumed helmets,
and with sword and arquebus advanced. Their firearms won the day, but
all hope of further advance was at an end, and Champlain returned to
Quebec with his great story of new lands to the south. It was not till
the spring of 1611 that he was again free to start on another exploring
expedition into the heart of Canada.

[Illustration: THE DEFEAT OF THE IROQUOIS BY CHAMPLAIN AND HIS PARTY
ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN. From a drawing in Champlain's _Voyages_, 1613.]

His journey to the rapids of the St. Louis has been well described:
"Like specks on the broad bosom of the waters, two pigmy vessels held
their course up the lonely St. Lawrence. They passed abandoned
Tadoussac, the channel of Orleans, the tenantless rock of Quebec, the
wide Lake of St. Peter with its crowded archipelago, and the forest
plain of Montreal. All was solitude. Hochelaga had vanished, and of
the savage population that Cartier had found sixty-eight years before,
no trace remained."

In a skiff