[23] Unconsciously, no doubt, he brought away with him to the King of France one of the most remarkable freshwater fish living on the North-American continent, for the gar-pike belongs, together with the sturgeon and its allies, to an ancient type of fish the representatives of which are found in rock formations as ancient as those of the Secondary and Early Tertiary periods. Champlain may be said to have discovered this remarkable gar-pike (Lepidosteus osseus), which is covered with bony scales "so strong that a poniard could not pierce them". The colour he describes as silver-grey. The head has a snout two feet and a half long, and the jaws possess double rows of sharp and dangerous teeth. These teeth were used by the natives as lancets with which to bleed themselves when they suffered from inflammation or headache. Champlain declares that the gar-pike often captures and eats water birds. It would swim in and among rushes or reeds and then raise its snout out of the water and keep perfectly still. Birds would mistake this snout for the stump of a tree and would attempt to alight on it; whereupon the fish would seize them by the legs and pull them down under the water.
[24] Spelt by Champlain with a "ch" instead of sh.
[25] Then called the Rivière des Iroquois.
[26] This was the first intimation probably that any European sent home for publication regarding the existence of the bison in North America, though the Spanish explorers nearly a hundred years before Champlain must have met with it in travelling through Louisiana, Texas, and northern Mexico. The bison is not known ever to have existed near Hudson Bay, or in Canada proper (basin of the St. Lawrence). South of Canada it penetrated to Pennsylvania and the Susquehanna River, but not farther eastward.
[27] The Amerindians of the Lake regions made much use of the sunflowers of the region (Helianthus multiflorus). Besides this species of sunflower already mentioned, which furnishes tubers from its roots (the "Jerusalem" artichoke) others were valued for their seeds, and some or all of these are probably the originals of the cultivated sunflower in European gardens. The largest of these was called Soleille by the French Canadians. It grew in the cultivated fields of the Amerindians to seven or eight feet in height, with an enormous flower. The seeds were carefully collected and boiled. Their oil was collected then from the water and was used to grease the hair. This same Huron country (the Simcoe country of modern times) was remarkable for its wild fruits. There was the Canada plum (Prunus americana), the wild black cherry (Prunus serotina), the red cherries (P. pennsylvanica), the choke cherry (P. virginiana), wild apples (Pyrus coronaria), wild pears (a small berry-like pear called "poire" by the French: Pyrus canadensis), and the may-apple (Podophyllum peltatum). Champlain describes this may-apple as of the form and colour of a small lemon with a similar taste, but having an interior which is very good and almost like that of figs. The may-apples grow on a plant which is two and a half feet high, with not more than three or four leaves like those of the fig tree, and only two fruits on each plant.