excellent relations had been established with the natives, when in the fall of 1607 the whole colony was recalled to France. Champlain, who had accompanied this expedition, turned it to good account in increasing his stores of geographical knowledge. In the following year, 1608, de Monts succeeded in obtaining a renewal of his patent for one year. After consultation with Champlain he decided that Quebec would be the best place at which to attempt a settlement. He accordingly equipped two vessels for the enterprise, and placed them under the command of Champlain, whom he appointed as his lieutenant with full powers of control over the whole expedition. He himself remained behind in Paris to watch over his interests, which were subject at every moment to attack. His lieutenant sailed from Honfleur on the 13th April 1608, and arrived at Tadousac on the 3rd of June, and at Quebec on the 3rd of July. Having disembarked his men, Champlain set them to work at once to clear the level piece of land at the base of the rock, erect a storehouse and dwellings, and surround the whole with a palisade and ditch. Thus in the summer of 1608 was the city of Quebec founded, and the power of France formally established on the North American continent.

The first event of note in the annals of the new colony was certainly not an auspicious one: a plot that was formed by some of the men of the expedition against the life of their commander. Had the designs of the conspirators not been brought to light in time, the course of Canadian history, as we know it, might have been seriously turned aside. Four men were found guilty, and sentenced to death; the ringleader only, a Norman named Jean Duval, was executed, the others were sent to France where their sentences were commuted. Lescarbot, a contemporary writer, to whom we are indebted for much information respecting the events of the period, states that the men were dissatisfied with their food; but from Champlain's own narrative it appears that the plot was formed, if not before the expedition left France, at least before it reached Quebec, and that the whole motive of the conspirators was gain, their intention being to deliver over all Champlain's goods to the Basques and Spaniards fishing and trading at Tadousac, and to escape on their vessels with the proceeds of their treason. This danger, however, having been happily averted, work was proceeded with on what Champlain in his narrative calls the "habitation," and by the time winter set in the dwellings were in readiness. The winter was destined to be a most unhappy one. As before, when Cartier took up his quarters on the banks of the St. Charles in the winter of 1535-6, scurvy broke out, and twenty men out of a company of twenty-eight died.

In the spring of 1609 a reinforcement for the shrunken colony was brought out by Pontgravé. It was in the summer of that year that Champlain, with little thought of the consequences his action would entail, carried out a promise previously made to the Algonquins and Hurons to assist them in their feud with the Iroquois. Taking eleven Frenchmen with him in a ship's boat, and accompanied by about three hundred savages in their canoes, he proceeded as far as the mouth of the Richelieu River. There most of the savages changed their minds, and deserted the party. Finding that the boat was not suited to the navigation of the Richelieu River up which the route to the enemy's country lay, Champlain sent it back to Quebec and nine men with it. He with two Frenchmen and sixty Indians proceeded in canoes, and on the 30th of July a band of Iroquois on the war-path was encountered on the shore of what has since been known as Lake Champlain. The story is briefly told. Champlain, who had loaded his arquebus with four balls, brought down at the first shot three Iroquois chiefs, two instantly killed, and the third mortally wounded. His men did further execution. The Iroquois, astounded at such swift death, turned and fled. In the pursuit others were killed. Commenting on this campaign, and a somewhat similar one of the year following, the Abbé Faillon observes that if Champlain, instead of siding with the Algonquins and Hurons against the Iroquois, had declared himself the friend of all the tribes, he would not only have done more honour to the French name, but would have gained access for himself and for the missionaries who were to follow him to all the Indian communities. By the course he actually followed he inspired the most powerful and best organized of the Indian tribes with a hatred for the French race and for the religion they professed, which during a long series of years wreaked itself in countless deeds of blood, and more than once brought the colony of New France to the verge of extinction. The massacre of Lachine (1689) was a late harvest of the blood sown on the shores of Lake Champlain eighty years before.

The vessels which brought out recruits brought also the news that the exclusive privilege of trade granted to de Monts had been cancelled, or at least had not been renewed, though de Monts still retained his position as the king's lieutenant in New France. Champlain was therefore obliged to return to France in the autumn and discuss matters. Leaving Quebec on the 5th September he reached Honfleur on the 14th October. He saw the king, reported progress, and showed him some of the products of the country. De Monts renewed his efforts to be reinstated in his privileges, but without success. In the end it was arranged that Champlain should return to Canada, which he did, leaving Honfleur on the 8th April 1610, and arriving at Quebec early in May. We pass over the second attack on the Iroquois, made in the month of June of this year, in which Champlain was slightly wounded. It is interesting, however, to learn that, on returning from his campaign, he found a piece of land near his "habitation" at Quebec, which he had brought under cultivation, yielding good crops of vegetables, Indian corn, wheat, rye, and barley. He had been much annoyed on reaching Quebec in the spring to find that no care had been taken of some grape vines that he had carefully laid down the previous fall. This was but one example of an indolent neglect only too characteristic, unhappily, of the Quebec colonists in after years.

Towards the end of this summer grave news arrived. The king, Henry IV, had fallen under the dagger of an assassin. Champlain and Pontgravé both thought it desirable to return to France without delay, as it was impossible to say how their interests might be affected by the change of government. The only incident of importance, so far as is known, which happened during Champlain's stay in France on this occasion, was his marriage to a Protestant young lady named Helen Boullé, whom, on account of her tender years—she was only twelve years old—he left to grow up under her father's roof, but who brought him as her dowry a much needed subsidy of six thousand francs. Thus financially reinforced he sailed again for Canada in the spring of 1611. He had an appointment to keep, made the previous year, with certain Indians to meet them at the Grand Saut (Lachine Rapids) to discuss matters of trade and war. He arrived there on the 28th May, a few days later than he had said, but found no Indians. Not being a man to waste time he employed himself while waiting in prospecting the Island of Montreal and erecting a wall, as the commencement of a fort, almost on the very spot selected thirty-one years afterwards by Maisonneuve for the same purpose. It has been conjectured that, if Champlain had known all the advantages possessed by Montreal, as compared with Quebec, before he began to construct buildings at the latter place, Montreal would probably have been the first capital of