December. 1919] 



The Canadian Fielx)-Naturalist 



107 



Regretting the waste of time and the hardships 

 endured to no purpose, but patient under his dis- 

 appointment, Champlam started on his return jour- 

 ney on the 10th June, accompanied by forty canoes, 

 which number was later increased to eighty by ac- 

 cession of parties along the way, all eager to trade 

 their furs at the Falls of St. Louis for the wonderful 

 wares of the white man. Champlain did not re- 

 cross the Muskrat lake portage, but ran the rapids 

 down the main stream. At the Chaudiere the In- 

 dians threw an offering of tobacco into the falls with 

 appropriate ceremony, "by which means they are 

 ensured protection against their enemies, that other- 



to do with him, and Champlain says: "As for our 

 liar, none of the savages wanted him, notwithstand- 

 ing my request to them to take him, and we left 

 him to the mercy of God." And so de Vignau 

 disappears from history. 



Anyway his troubles were all over when our story 

 begins again after an interval of 254 years. From 

 1613 we jump to 1867, in which year John Lee, 

 a farmer living in the Township of Ross, near 

 Cobden, Ontario, took a job of clearing land for 

 Captain Overman, of the Jason Could, the Ottawa 

 Forwarding Company's steamboat on Muskrat lake. 

 Captain Overman had located lot 12 in the second 



t.r- - 





f 



Stream from Green lake flows through alders on the right. Astrolabe was found near where 



figure is standing. 



wise misfortune would befall them." But in his 

 heart, man has seldom any real faith in a propitia- 

 tory sacrifice the gods are not so easy to turn 

 aside and in spite of this solemn rite, several times 

 the Indians were thrown into a panic at night by 

 false alarms of an Iroquois attack. 



Arrived at the ships on the 17th June, Champlain 

 called his chief men together, and had de Vignau 

 "make declaration of his maliciousness" before 

 them. The wretch pleaded hard for forgiveness, 

 "and in view of certain considerations" Champlain 

 pardoned him. The subsequent fate of the impostor 

 is not on record. The French would have nothing 



concession of Ross, about two miles from the town 

 of Cobden ; and it was here that the astrolabe we 

 must attribute to Champlain, was found in August, 

 1867, by John Lee's son, Edward George, at that 

 time a boy of 14 years, and now a well known 

 resident of the third line of Fitzroy, a few miles 

 from Arnprior. How he discovered the astrolabe 

 cannot be better told than in Mr. Lee's own words, 

 as he related it to me in August last: 



"One day we were working just below Green 

 lake in a bush of mixed hardwood and pine. I 

 don't remember the number of the lot now, but il 

 was afterwards occupied by John Sammcn, father 



