66 THE FEENCH, ENGLISH, AND INDIANS. [1609. 



yearly from the north, to bring their beaver and 

 otter skins to the market of Montreal. 



The position of Canada invited intercourse with 

 the interior, and eminently favored her schemes of 

 commerce and policy. The river St. Lawrence, 

 and the chain of the great lakes, opened a vast 

 extent of inland navigation ; while their tributary 

 streams, interlocking with the branches of the 

 Mississippi, afforded ready access to that mighty 

 river, and gave the restless voyager free range 

 over half the continent. But these advantages 

 were well nigh neutralized. Nature opened the 

 way, but a watchful and terrible enemy guarded the 

 portal. The forests south of Lake Ontario gave 

 harborage to the five tribes of the L'oquois, impla- 

 cable foes of Canada. They waylaid her trading 

 parties, routed her soldiers, murdered her mission- 

 aries, and spread havoc and woe through all her 

 settlements. 



It was an evil hour for Canada, when, on the 

 twenty-eighth of May, 1609,^ Samuel de Champlain, 

 impelled by his own adventurous spirit, departed 

 from the hamlet of Quebec to follow a war-party 

 of Algonquins against their hated enemy, the Iro- 

 quois. Ascending the Sorel, and passing the rapids 

 at Chambly, he embarked on the lake which bears 

 his name, and with two French attendants, steered 

 southward, with his savage associates, toward the 

 rocky promontory of Ticonderoga. They moved 

 with all the precaution of Indian warfare ; when, 



J Champlain, Voyages, 136 (Paris, 1632). Charlevoix, I. 142. 



