risks of my life. But realizing that I could not help
the matter, and that everything depended on the will
of God, I comforted myself, resolving to see it in a
short time. I had such sure information that I could
not doubt the report of these people, who go to traffic
with others dwelling in those northern regions, a
great part of whom live in a place very abundant in
the chase and where there are great numbers of large
animals, the skins of several of which I saw, and
which I concluded were buffaloes from their
representation of their form. Fishing is also very
abundant there. This journey requires forty days as
well in returning as in going.

Thus Champlain almost had a chance to see the bison and
the great plains of the West. As it was, he did his
immediate duty and restored the peace of Huron and
Algonquin. In partial compensation for the alluring
journey he relinquished, he had a better opportunity to
study the Hurons in their settlements and to investigate
their relations with their neighbours--the Tobacco Nation,
the Neutral Nation, les Cheveux Releves, and the Race of
Fire. Hence the Voyage of 1615 not only describes the
physical aspects of Huronia, but contains intimate details
regarding the life of its people--their wigwams, their
food, their manner of cooking, their dress, their
decorations, their marriage customs, their medicine-men,
their burials, their assemblies, their agriculture, their
amusements, and their mode of fishing. It is Champlain's
most ambitious piece of description, far less detailed