658 [Assembly 



Champlain looking forth from the field of battle, upon the 

 placid water that laved the spot, and probably exulting in the 

 pride of even such a victory, named the lake, Champlain. His 

 countrymen in succeeding years would have substituted the name 

 of " Mere des Iroquois," but the Anglo-saxon and posterity avert- 

 ed the wrong, (for the latter name was not known to the nomen- 

 clature of the Indian,) and the lake still perpetuates the memory of 

 its discoverer. Champlain entered upon the waters of the lake 

 on the 4th of July 1609, and eleven years before the Mayflower 

 sought the shores of New England. On the retreat of this ex- 

 pedition, Champlain was constrained to witness one of those 

 appalling scenes incident to Indian warfare — the torture of a 

 prisoner. This terrific spectacle occurred, it is supposed, within 

 the present limits of Willsboro'. The sufferings of the victim, 

 inflicted in all the intensity and refinement of savage barbarity, 

 which he in vain attempted to avert, were, in mercy, closed by the 

 arquebus of Champlain. 



The subsequent career of this extraordinary man, was like the 

 commencement, distinguished and brilliant. We may, with pro- 

 priety, linger a few moments in glancing at his future history. 

 .Returning the tliird time to the New World he embarked again 

 " to satisfy the desire I had, " he wrifes '' of learniDg something 

 about that country," with his former allies and associates, in* an 

 incursion into the territories of the Iroquois. Exhibiting rare, 

 military science and genii^s in this ignoble w^arfare, amid the wilds 

 of Western New-York, he was at length compelled to retreat 

 sorely wound.-d and repulsed from an attack upon an Indian 

 stockade. That winter the intrepid and untiring adventurer spent 

 among the gloomy' and comfortless wigwams of the Hurons, upon 

 the sequestered shores of Lake Nipissing. Again restored to 

 active life and civilization, he erects, in defiance of the g'rovelling 

 cupidity of superiors, the magnificent castle of St. Louis. In 

 1615 still recuring to his Indian associates and accompanied by 

 Monks of St. Francis, he penetrated far into the recesses of the 

 western solitudes, and the first of civilized men, gazed upon the 

 mighty waves, bounded only by the horizon, which he called 

 " La mer douce," and which another generation, distinguished 

 as Lake Huron. He gloriously defended Quebec, from an assault 



