On the 3d day of July, 1608, Champlain laid the foundation of Quebec. The name which he gave to it had been applied to it by the savages long before. It is derived from the Algonquin word quebio, or quebec, signifying a narrowing, and was descriptive of the form which the river takes at that place, to which we have already referred.

A few days after their arrival, an event occurred of exciting interest to Champlain and his little colony. One of their number, Jean du Val, an abandoned wretch, who possessed a large share of that strange magnetic power which some men have over the minds of others, had so skilfully practised upon the credulity of his comrades that he had drawn them all into a scheme which, aside from its atrocity, was weak and ill-contrived at every point. It was nothing less than a plan to assassinate Champlain, seize the property belonging to the expedition, and sell it to the Basque fur-traders at Tadoussac, under the hallucination that they should be enriched by the pillage. They had even entered into a solemn compact, and whoever revealed the secret was to be visited by instant death. Their purpose was to seize Champlain in an unguarded moment and strangle him, or to shoot him in the confusion of a false alarm to be raised in the night by themselves. But before the plan was fully ripe for execution, a barque unexpectedly arrived from Tadoussac with an instalment of utensils and provisions for the colony. One of the men, Antoine Natel, who had entered into the conspiracy with reluctance, and had been restrained from a disclosure by fear, summoned courage to reveal the plot to the pilot of the boat, first securing from him the assurance that he should be shielded from the vengeance of his fellow-conspirators. The secret was forthwith made known to Champlain, who, by a stroke of finesse, placed himself beyond danger before he slept. At his suggestion, the four leading spirits of the plot were invited by one of the sailors to a social repast on the barque, at which two bottles of wine which he pretended had been given him at Tadoussac were to be uncorked. In the midst of the festivities, the "four worthy heads of the conspiracy," as Champlain satirically calls them, were suddenly clapped into irons. It was now late in the evening, but Champlain nevertheless summoned all the rest of the men into his presence, and offered them a full pardon, on condition that they would disclose the whole scheme and the motives which had induced them to engage in it. This they were eager to do, as they now began to comprehend the dangerous compact into which they had entered, and the peril which threatened their own lives. These preliminary investigations rendered it obvious to Champlain that grave consequences must follow, and he therefore proceeded with great caution.

The next day, he took the depositions of the pardoned men, carefully reducing them to writing. He then departed for Tadoussac, taking the four conspirators with him. On consultation, he decided to leave them there, where they could be more safely guarded until Pont Gravé and the principal men of the expedition could return with them to Quebec, where he proposed to give them a more public and formal trial. This was accordingly done. The prisoners were duly confronted with the witnesses. They denied nothing, but freely admitted their guilt. With the advice and concurrence of Pont Gravé, the pilot, surgeon, mate, boatswain, and others, Champlain condemned the four conspirators to be hung; three of them, however, to be sent home for a confirmation or revision of their sentence by the authorities in France, while the sentence of Jean Du Val, the arch-plotter of the malicious scheme, was duly executed in their presence, with all the solemn forms and ceremonies usual on such occasions. Agreeably to a custom of that period, the ghastly head of Du Val was elevated on the highest pinnacle of the fort at Quebec, looking down and uttering its silent warning to the busy colonists below; the grim signal to all beholders, that "the way of the transgressor is hard."

The catastrophe, had not the plot been nipped in the bud, would have been sure to take place. The final purpose of the conspirators might not have been realized; it must have been defeated at a later stage; but the hand of Du Val, prompted by a malignant nature, was nerved to strike a fatal blow, and the life of Champlain would have been sacrificed at the opening of the tragic scene.

The punishment of Du Val, in its character and degree, was not only agreeable to the civil policy of the age, but was necessary for the protection of life and the maintenance of order and discipline in the colony. A conspiracy on land, under the present circumstances, was as dangerous as a mutiny at sea; and the calm, careful, and dignified procedure of Champlain in firmly visiting upon the criminal a severe though merited punishment, reveals the wisdom, prudence, and humanity which were prominent elements in his mental and moral constitution.

ENDNOTES:

56. Membertou. See Pierre Biard's account of his death in 1611. Relations des Jésuites. Quebec ed, Vol. I. p. 32.

57. Had the distinguished navigators who early visited the coasts of North America illustrated their narratives by drawings and maps, it would have added greatly to their value. Capt. John Smith's map, though necessarily indefinite and general, is indispensable to the satisfactory study of his still more indefinite "Description of New England." It is, perhaps, a sufficient apology for the vagueness of Smith's statements, and therefore it ought to be borne in mind, that his work was originally written, probably, from memory, at least for the most part, while he was a prisoner on board a French man-of-war in 1615. This may be inferred from the following statement of Smith himself. In speaking of the movement of the French fleet, he says: "Still we spent our time about the Iles neere Fyall: where to keepe my perplexed thoughts from too much meditation of my miserable estate, I writ this discourse" Vide Description of New England by Capt. John Smith, London, 1616.

While the descriptions of our coast left by Champlain are invaluable to the historian and cannot well be overestimated, the process of making these surveys, with his profound love of such explorations and adventures, must have given him great personal satisfaction and enjoyment. It would be difficult to find any region of similar extent that could offer, on a summer's excursion, so much beauty to his eager and critical eye as this. The following description of the Gulf of Maine, which comprehends the major part of the field surveyed by Champlain, that lying between the headlands of Cape Sable and Cape Cod, gives an excellent idea of the infinite variety and the unexpected and marvellous beauties that are ever revealing themselves to the voyager as he passes along our coast.—

"This shoreland is also remarkable, being so battered and frayed by sea and storm, and worn perhaps by arctic currents and glacier beds, that its natural front of some 250 miles is multiplied to an extent of not less than 2,500 miles of salt-water line; while at an average distance of about three miles from the mainland, stretches a chain of outposts consisting of more than three hundred islands, fragments of the main, striking in their diversity on the west; low, wooded and grassy to the water's edge, and rising eastward through bolder types to the crowns and cliffs of Mount Desert and Quoddy Head, an advancing series from beauty to sublimity: and behind all these are deep basins and broad river-mouths, affording convenient and spacious harbors, in many of which the navies of nations might safely ride at anchor…. Especially attractive was the region between the Piscataqua and Penobscot in its marvellous beauty of shore and sea, of island and inlet, of bay and river and harbor, surpassing any other equally extensive portion of the Atlantic coast, and compared by travellers earliest and latest, with the famed archipelago of the Aegean." Vide Maine, Her Place in History, by Joshua L. Chamberlain, LL D, President of Bowdoin College, Augusta, 1877, pp. 4-5.