132 



The First Battle of Lake Champlain. 



woods, whither I pursued them, killing still more of them. Our 

 savages also killed several of them and took ten or twelve prisoners. 

 * * * After gaming the victory our men amused themselves by 

 taking a great quantity of Indian corn and some meal from their ene- 

 mies, also their armor. After feasting sumptuously, dancing and sing- 

 ing, we returned, three hours after with the prisoners," and " after 

 going some eight leagues, toward evening, they took one of the prison- 

 ers," etc., and he proceeds to detail the scenes of torture in the camp. 

 The day had witnessed the battle, the sack of the fort and camp, 

 the dancing and singing and feasting and, finally, the journey of eight 

 leagues, and still it was only " toward evening." ISTo hint is given of 

 any extended pursuit of the Iroquois through the dense wilderness 

 and, with so much crowded into the day, there could have been little 

 time for such pursuit. To have seen the falls of Ticonderoga Cham- 

 plain must have gone some two miles from the spot which has been 

 fixed by historians as the battle-ground, burdened with his heavy arque- 

 buse, abandoning his base of supplies, and plunging into an unknown 

 wilderness in pursuit of a fleet and unincumbered foe, which still out- 

 numbered his own force, nearly or quite three to one, and exposing 

 himself to the danger of a deadly ambuscade. What object could he 

 have had in incurring this danger? Did he see these falls on the day 

 of the battle? Is it probable that he saw them then and neglected to 

 mention this significant fact in its proper place in his journal? 



This was one of his most important and most perilous voyages of 

 discovery. He had penetrated over a hundred miles into the enemy's 

 country, and may it not be fairly presumed that, here, at the end of 

 that journey he would have noted on the day of its occurrence so re- 

 markable a circumstance as this? Note the expression, " which I saw 

 afterwards." In the Prince Society's translation this phrase is in 

 parenthesis. Why? Did the translator have doubts or suspicions of 

 it? It would seem so, else so important an expression would not have 

 been thus slighted. It might prove an interesting study to trace the 

 history of this phrase, so significantly cut out from the main narra- 

 tive and parenthetically degraded by the translator. Are there grounds 

 for the suspicion that it may be an interpolation? 



At the time of Champlain's explorations, two religious orders in the 

 Catholic church were struggling with each other for precedence, not 

 only in the Old World but in this great missionary field just opened in 

 the New World. The Recollets came over with Columbus in 1493 

 and were in Canada in 1615, and their rivals, the Jesuits, were here 

 even before that, and were firmly established in New France in 1633. 



