with singing and music on the river Équille, and that in the same month we went to see the wheat-fields two leagues from the fort, and dined merrily in the sunshine." At these feasts there was hardly a distinction between the courtly foreigner and the naked Indian, and even the coarse aboriginal palate felt that here was some one who would teach a new felicity. Mr. Parkman tells us of a convert who asked, when at the point of death, whether he might expect any pastry in heaven like that with which the French had regaled him.

In return for these blandishments it was not very hard for the Indians to accept the picturesque and accommodating faith of their guests. This was not at first done very reverently, to be sure. Sometimes when the early missionaries asked their converts for the proper words to translate the sacred phrases of the catechism, their mischievous proselytes would give them very improper words instead, and then would shout with delight whenever the priests began their lessons. Dr. George E. Ellis, in his valuable book "The Red Man and the White Man," points out that no such trick was ever attempted, so far as we know, beneath the graver authority of the apostle Eliot, when his version of the Scriptures was in progress. In some cases the native criticisms took the form of more serious remonstrance. Membertou, one of the most influential of the early Indian converts, said frankly that he did not like the petition for daily bread in the Lord's Prayer, and thought that some distinct allusion to moose meat and fish would be far better.

To these roving and companionable Frenchmen, or, rather, to the native canoe-men, who were often their half-breed posterity, was given at a later period the name voyageurs — a name still used for the same class in Canada, though it describes a race now vanishing. I have ventured to anticipate its date a little, and apply it to the French rovers of this early period, because it is one of those words which come sponta

neously into use, tell their own story, and save much description. The character that afterwards culminated in the class called voyageurs was the character which lay behind all the early French enterprises. It implied those roving qualities which led the French to be pioneers in the fisheries and the fur trade; and which, even after the arrival of the Jesuit missionaries, still prevailed under the blessing of the Church. The Spaniards were gloomy despots; the Dutch and Swedes were traders; the English, at least in New England, were religious enthusiasts; the French were voyageurs, and even under the narrative of the most heroic and saintly priest we see something of the same spirit. The best early type of the voyageur temperament combined with the courage of the Church militant is to be found in Samuel de Champlain.

After all, there is no earthly immortality more secure than to have stamped one's name on the map; and that of Champlain will be forever associ

ated with the beautiful lake which he first described, and to which the French missionaries vainly attempted to attach another name. Champlain was a Frenchman of good family, who had served in the army, and had, indeed, been from his childhood familiar with scenes of war, because he had dwelt near the famous city of Rochelle, the very hot-bed of the civil strife between Catholics and Hu

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN.

guenots. Much curiosity existing in France in regard to the great successes of Spain in America, he obtained naval em

ployment in the Spanish service, and visited, as commander of a ship, the Spanish-American colonies. This was in 1599, and he wrote a report on the condition of all these regions— a report probably fuller than anything else existing at that time, inasmuch as the Spaniards systematically concealed the details of their colonial wealth. Little did they know that they had in the humble French captain of the Saint-Julian an untiring observer, who would reveal to the acute mind of Henry the Fourth of France many of the secrets of Spanish domination; and would also disgust the French mind with pictures of the fanaticism of their rivals. In his report he denounced the cruelty of the Spaniards, described the way in which they converted Indians by the Inquisition, and made drawings of the burnings of heretics by priests. His observations on all commercial matters were of the greatest value, and he was the first, or one of the first, to suggest a shipcanal across the isthmus of Panama. Full of these vivid impressions of Spanish empire, he turned his attention towards the northern part of the continent, in regions unsettled by the Spaniards, visiting them first in 1603, under Pont-Gravé, and then in seven successive voyages. His narratives are minute, careful, and graphic; he explored river after river with the Indians, eating and sleeping with them, and recording laboriously their minutest habits. It is to his descriptions, beyond any others, that we must look for faithful pictures of the Indian absolutely unaffected by contact with white men ; and his voyages, which have lately been translated by Dr. C. P. Otis, and published by the Prince Society, with annotations by Mr. E. L. Slafter, have a value almost unique.

Champlain himself may be best described as a devout and high-minded voyageur. He was a good Catholic, and on some of his exploring expeditions he planted at short intervals crosses of white cedar in token of his faith; but we see the born rover through the proselyting Christian. Look, for in

stance, at the spirit in which he dedicates his voyage of 1604 to the Queen Regent:

"MADAME,-Of all the most useful and excellent arts, that of navigation has always seemed to me to occupy the first place. For the more hazardous it is and the more numerous the perils and losses by which it is attended, so much the more is it esteemed and exalted above all others, being wholly unsuited to the timid and irresolute. By this art we obtain knowledge of different countries, regions, and realms. By it we attract and bring to our own land all kinds of riches, by it the idolatry of paganism is overthrown and Christianity proclaimed throughout all the regions of the earth. This is the art which from my early age has won my love, and induced me to expose myself all my life to the impetuous waves of the ocean, and led me to explore the coasts of a part of America, especially of New France, where I have always desired to see the lily flourish, and also the only religion, catholic, apostolic, and Roman."

Here we have the French lilies and the holy Catholic religion at the end, but the impulse of the voyageur through all the rest. We see here the born wanderer, as full of eagerness as Tennyson's Ulysses,

"Always roaming with a hungry heart."

And when we compare this frank and sailor-like address with the devout diplomacy, already quoted, of the Spanish doctor, we see in how absolutely different a spirit the men of these two nations approached the American Indians.

Champlain was an ardent lover of out-door life, and an intelligent field naturalist, and the reader finds described or mentioned in his narratives many objects now familiar, but then strange. He fully describes, for instance, the gar-pike of Western lakes, he mentions the moose under the Algonquin name "orignac," the seal under the name of "sea-lion," the musk-rat, and the horseshoe-crab. He describes almost every point and harbor on the north-east coast, giving the names by which many of them are since known; for instance, Mount Desert, which he calls Isle des Monts Déserts, meaning simply Desert

Mountains, so that the accent need not be laid, as is now usual, on the second syllable. We know from him that while yet unvisited by white men, the Indians of the Lake Superior region not only mined for copper, but melted it into sheets, and hammered it into shape, making bracelets and arrow-heads. Cartier, in 1535, had mentioned the same thing, but not so fully. And all Champlain's descriptions, whether of places or people,

have the value that comes of method and minuteness. When he ends a chapter with "This is precisely what I have seen of this northern shore," or, "This is what I have learned from those savages," we know definitely where his knowledge begins and ends, and whence he got his information.

It is fortunate for the picturesqueness of his narrative that he fearlessly ventures into the regions of the supernatural, but always upon very definite and decided testimony.

It would