398 ON THE EARLY DISCOVERIES OF THE 



spring to a great lake he heard of above, beyond which, he was told, 

 the buffaloes were to be found, whose skins he saw among the Hurons ; 

 but dissensions breaking out amongst his Indian allies, he returned to 

 Quebec by the way he came, and for the rest of his life devoted him- 

 self to the care of the colony on the lower St. Lawrence. 



The oldest map in this collection will illustrate the geographical 

 knowledge obtained by Champlain's great expedition. It bears date, 

 indeed, twenty years later, but it contains hardly anything but what 

 is to be found in Champlain's account. It is almost identical with the 

 map accompanying his second publication, and is, indeed, evidently 

 copied from it, even to the rectangular islands on Hudson's Bay, and 

 some marks, which mean nothing as they stand here, but in the pub- 

 lished map refer to descriptions in the body of the work. Some addi- 

 tions were doubtless made to their knowledge in the interval between 

 the great expedition and the date of the publication of Champlain's journal 

 in 1632, for the Jesuits and Recollets had established missions amongst 

 the Huron villages ; but if we may judge from Sagard's journal, in 

 1622 and '23, the accessions would not be very great, for, interesting 

 as it is in other respects, the geographical details are so meagre that 

 you can only make out that he went and returned by Lake Nipissing. 

 As to the additions between Champlain's publication and the date of 

 the map, they only amount to six names, which I have underscored 

 in red ink, and I have added, instead of the bare names in other 

 parts, numbers in red ink referring to Champlain's descriptions, of 

 which I append a copy. So unlike the reality is this map, that at 

 first sight one would hardly make out what it is intended to repre- 

 sent. Lake Huron assumes a shape as dissimilar from the truth as 

 can well be conceived. An imaginary lake appears to the north of 

 Lake Huron, near Sault Ste. Marie, which, as it bears the same 

 name, probably records a misunderstood description of Lake Michi- 

 gan ; and Lake Erie disappears altogether, being replaced by a sim- 

 ple river. The latter lake was however known, as one of the mis- 

 sionaries to the Hurons had penetrated as far the year before the 

 date of the map, a trace of which is found in the addition of the 

 name Lac des Erie's ; but the configuration given by Champlain re- 

 mains unaltered, and there is nothing but a river, on which it is said 

 there is a great fall, at which quantities of fish are carried over and 

 stunned. 



The small accession of knowledge between 1614 and 1643 is of it- 

 self negative evidence of what we know from other sources, the 

 pause in the course of discovery which took place after Champlain's 

 expedition. Times, indeed, were approaching which were not favor- 



