magnificent cargo of furs was dispatched to France, and Champlain and
twenty-eight men were left to winter at Quebec. When spring came, only
nine were left alive, but reinforcements and supplies soon arrived, and
Champlain arranged to proceed into the interior and explore the country.

The resources at his disposal were small, he could not hope to assemble
a great expedition; so he determined to make the venture with only a few
men and little baggage, relying upon the friendship of the Indians,
instead of seeking to conquer them, as the Spaniards had always done.
Champlain had from the first treated the Indians well, and it was this
necessity of gaining their friendship that determined the policy which
France pursued--the policy of making friends of the Indians, entering
into an alliance with them, and helping them fight their battles.
Champlain opened operations by joining an Algonquin war-party against
the Iroquois, and assisting at their defeat--starting, at the same time,
a blood feud with that powerful tribe which endured as long as the
French held Canada. In the course of this expedition, he discovered the
beautiful lake which bears his name.

He went back to France for a time, after that, and on his next return to
Canada, in 1611, began building a town at the foot of a rock which had
been named Mont Royal, since corrupted to Montreal. Succeeding years
were spent in further explorations, which carried him across Lake
Ontario, and in plans for the conversion of the Indians, to which the
aid of the Jesuits was summoned. Missions were established, and the
intrepid priests pushed their way farther and farther into the
wilderness. To this work, Champlain gave more and more of his thought in
the last years of his life, which ended on Christmas day, 1635.

Among the young men whom Champlain set to work among the Indians was