and North, of hidden minerals there, and of fertile lands. Champlain
was determined to see these things for himself and it was to that end
that he made his two great trips to the interior, in 1613 and 1616,
respectively.

The expedition of 1613 was not a journey of indefinite exploration; it
had a very definite end in view. A few years previously Champlain had
sent into the villages of the Algonquins on the upper Ottawa River a
young Frenchman named Vignau, in order that by living for a time among
these people he might learn their language and become useful as
an interpreter. In 1612 Vignau came back with a marvelous story
concerning a trip which he had made with his Algonquin friends to the
Great North Sea where he had seen the wreck of an English vessel. This
striking news inflamed Champlain's desire to find out whether this was
not the route for which both Cartier and he himself had so eagerly
searched--the western passage to Cathay and the Indies. There is
evidence that the explorer from the first doubted the truth of
Vignau's story, but in 1613 he decided to make sure and started up the
Ottawa River, taking the young man with him to point the way.

After a fatiguing journey the party at length reached the Algonquin
encampment on Allumette Island in the upper Ottawa, where his doubts
were fully confirmed. Vignau, the Algonquins assured Champlain, was an
impostor; he had never been out of their sight, had never seen a Great
North Sea; the English shipwreck was a figment of his imagination.
"Overcome with wrath." writes Champlain, "I had him removed from my
presence, being unable to bear the sight of him." The party went no
further, but returned to Quebec. As for the impostor, the generosity
of his leader in the end allowed him to go unpunished. Though the
expedition had been in one sense a fool's errand and Champlain felt