into whose experience were crowded so many novel sights
and whose soul was tested, year after year, by the
ever-varying perils of the wilderness. No life, it is
true, can be fitly sketched in a chronological abridgment,
but history abounds with lives which, while important,
do not exact from a biographer the kind of detail that
for the actions of Champlain becomes priceless. Kant and
Hegel were both great forces in human thought, yet
throughout eighty years Kant was tethered to the little
town of Konigsberg, and Hegel did not know what the French
were doing in Jena the day after there had been fought
just outside a battle which smote Prussia to her knees.
The deeds of such men are their thoughts, their books,
and these do not make a story. The life of Champlain is
all story. The part of it which belongs to the Wars of
the League is lost to us from want of records. But
fortunately we possess in his Voyages the plain, direct
narrative of his exploits in America--a source from which
all must draw who would know him well.

The method to be pursued in this book is not that of the
critical essay. Nor will these pages give an account of
Champlain's times with reference to ordinances regulating
the fur trade, or to the policy of French kings and their
ministers towards emigration. Such subjects must be
touched on, but here it will be only incidentally. What
may be taken to concern us is the spirited action of
Champlain's middle life--the period which lies between
his first voyage to the St Lawrence and his return from
the land of the Onondagas. Not that he had ended his work