mind of the narrator discovery is always the more engaging theme.
Champlain is indeed the historian of St Croix, Port Royal, and Quebec,
but only incidentally or from chance. By temper he was the explorer,
that is, the man of action, willing to record the broad results, but
without the instinct which led Lescarbot to set down the minutiae of
life in a small, rough settlement. There is one side of Champlain's
activity as a colonizer which we must lament that he has not
described--namely, his efforts to interest the nobles and prelates of
the French court in the upbuilding of Canada. A diary of his life at
Paris and Fontainebleau would be among the choicest documents of the
early colonial era. But Champlain was too blunt and loyal to set down
the story of his relations with the great, and for this portion of his
life we must rely upon letters, reports, and memoranda, which are so
formal as to lack the atmosphere of that painful but valiant experience.

Excluding the brief notices of life at St Croix, {148} Port Royal, and
Quebec, Champlain's _Voyages_ present a story of discovery by sea and
discovery by land. In other words, the four years of Acadian adventure
relate to discoveries made along the seaboard, while the remaining
narratives, including the _Des Sauvages_ of 1604, relate to the basin
of the St Lawrence. Mariner though he was by early training, Champlain
achieved his chief success as an explorer by land, in the region of the
Great Lakes. Bad fortune prevented him from pursuing his course past
Martha's Vineyard to the mouth of the Hudson and Chesapeake Bay. It
was no small achievement to accomplish what he did on the coast of
Norumbega, but his most distinctive discoveries were those which he
made in the wilderness, leading up to his fine experience of 1615-16
among the Hurons.

To single out Champlain's chief literary triumph, it was he who
introduced the Algonquin, the Huron, and the Iroquois to the delighted
attention of France. Ever since the days of Cartier the French had
known that savages inhabited the banks of the St Lawrence, but
Champlain is the pioneer in that great body of literature on the North
American Indian, which thenceforth continued without interruption in
France to the _Rene_ and _Atala_ {149} of Chateaubriand. Above all
other subjects, the Indians are Champlain's chief theme.

To some extent the account of Indian life which is given in the
_Voyages_ suffers by comparison with t