In youth Champlain became an excellent seaman, but, as his country was soon embroiled in civil and religious wars, his energies were engaged in martial exploits upon the land, and not upon the foaming Atlantic. Joining Henry of Navarre, he fought for the King with zeal and enthusiasm, although he, himself, was a Catholic, and his sovereign championed the Huguenot or Protestant cause. Champlain, in fact, loved country more than religion, and struggled to save her from dismemberment. His purse was small, his want great, and thus Henry the Fourth, from his own slender revenues, gave him a position as Captain.
The war was finally over, and the youthful Champlain conceived a design which was quite in harmony with his adventurous nature. He would, indeed, visit the West Indies and bring back a report of those wondrous regions where was much peril, and where every intruding Frenchman was threatened with death. Here was adventure enough for any young fellow who had the stomach for a fight.
No sooner conceived than executed! The hot-blooded Frenchman was quickly on board a vessel bound for Vera Cruz. He stopped at the West Indies, made plans and sketches of them all, then landed upon the Mexican Coast. He penetrated inland and was struck with amazement at what he saw in the beautiful City of Mexico, where Cortés had battled, bled and conquered. He visited Panama, and,—what think you!—even at this early date conceived the plan of shipping freight across the Isthmus, where to-day the United States has dug a great canal to expedite the commerce of the world.
“I believe that a ship-canal, if constructed, would shorten the voyage to the South Sea by more than fifteen hundred miles,” he has written.
Oh, valorous Frenchman, had you but lived to see your wayward dream come to be a living reality!
The adventurer now returned to the French Court, that Versailles of which has been truthfully said: “It cost one billion of francs and it took one billion drops of the peasants’ blood to build it!” Where, also, is the portrait of the famous soldier whose epitaph reads: “He was invincible in peace, invisible in war.” Here was the center of frivolity and fashion, exactly what would weary the blood of such a backwoods soul as Champlain. He soon tired of it and longed to plunge again into the wilderness of the unknown West, for there, forsooth, would be danger and hardship enough for any man.
Good fortune was to be with him. At court was a gray-haired veteran of the civil wars, who wished to mark his closing days with some notable achievement for France and for the church. This was Aymar de Chastes, commander of the order of St. John, and Governor of Dieppe. He longed to sail for Canada, or New France—would Champlain go with him? Well, I should think so! They embraced, shook hands upon it,—they would seek adventure and hardship together.
So this is how they happened to be sailing past the hemlock-clad hills of Murray Bay, upon that bright, clear morning, and I’ll warrant that, if you ever play golf upon the course far above the town, as many of you doubtless have often done, and you will look out upon the great, turbid and raging river, where perhaps you can see the bobbing back of a white porpoise, you will think different thoughts than those which are connected with a sliced drive or a miserable putt.
Like veritable gnats upon the surface of the tide-swept stream, the vessels kept upon their way, passing the trading-post of Tadoussac (once a flourishing settlement, but now abandoned), the channel of Orleans, and the spuming falls of Montmorenci. They drifted by the brown rocks of Quebec, on, on, up the blue and charging river, until they came opposite that rounded mountain which lifts its head high above the present city of Montreal. All was solitude. Sixty-eight years before this Jacques Cartier, the navigator, had found a numerous savage population, but now all had vanished, and only a few wandering Algonquin redskins peered at them from the edge of the forest.
Here are the fiercest of rapids, which, if you pass through to-day, you will find to be dangerous and an exciting adventure. The vigorous Champlain endeavored to paddle up them with a few of the childlike Algonquins. His courage was greater than his ability to stem the whirling foam and tempestuous waves. Oars, paddles, poles, and pikes could not force the thin birch-bark canoes up the swift-moving St. Lawrence, and he was forced to return, acknowledging himself beaten. When he mounted the deck of his vessel, the redmen made rude sketches upon the planking of what he would find above, and spoke of a mighty water-fall (Niagara Falls) where the river plunged downward in a mass of tempestuous spray. Champlain listened with pleasure to these stories of what lay beyond, but he had to return, as De Chastes so willed it. After an uneventful voyage the adventurers reached the shores of France.