[Todo-manager-cvs] Peedily made up in the erectio

[Simkowitz <hem...@in...>]

Assassination of his predecessor, and abjured the Protestant faith of
which he had previously been the champion, Champlain, like other
Frenchmen, who had followed the Duke of Guise, became an ardent
supporter of the new regime and eventually a favourite of the Bernese
prince. He visited the West Indies in a Spanish ship and made himself
well acquainted with Mexico and other countries bordering on the Gulf.
He has described all his voyages to the Indies and Canada in quaint
quarto volumes, now very rare, and valuable on account of their minute
and truthful narrative--despite his lively and credulous
imagination--and the drawings and maps which he made rudely of the
places he saw. His accounts of the Indians of Canada are among the most
valuable that have come to us from the early days of American history.
He had a fair knowledge of natural history for those times, though he
believed in Mexican griffins, and was versed in geography and
cartography. In 1603 Pontgrave and Champlain ascended the River St.
Lawrence as far as the island of Montreal, where they found only a few
wandering Algonquins of the Ottawa and its tributaries, in place of the
people who had inhabited the town of Hochelaga in the days of Cartier's
visits. Champlain attempted to {50} pass the Lachine rapids but was soon
forced to give up the perilous and impossible venture. During this
voyage he explored the Saguenay for a considerable distance, and was
able to add largely to the information that Cartier had given of Canada
and the country around the Gulf. When the expedition reached France,
Aymar de Chastes was dead, but two months had hardly elapsed after
Champlain's return when a new company was formed on the usual basis of
trade and colonisation. At its head was Sieur de Monts, Pierre du Guast,
the governor of Pons, a Calvinist and a friend of the King. After much
deliberation it was decided to venture south of Canada and explore th