translating with his practised hand into river and shore line of this
precious map, the original of which is still kept among the proud archives
of France. He was disappointed the while, I have no doubt, that still the
fresh water kept flowing from the west, and that still there was no word
of the salt sea.

The straight line which makes the western border of his map is merciful of
his ignorance, but merciless of his hopes. It admits no stream that does
not flow into one of the lakes or into the St. Lawrence. But it was made
probably four years before his death and it is possible, indeed probable,
that just before paralysis came upon him, he had heard through the famous
coureur de bois, Jean Nicolet, whom he had despatched the year previous,
of a river which this man of the woods had descended so far that "in three
days more" he would have reached what the Indians called the "Great
Water." [Footnote: The Mississippi. Nicolet probably did not go beyond the
Fox portage. See C. W. Butterfield, "The Discovery of the Northwest by
Jean Nicolet."] There is good reason, in the appointment of this same
coureur de bois as a commissioner and interpreter at Three Rivers, for
thinking (as one wishes to think) that like Moses, Champlain had, through
him a vision of the valley which he himself might not enter, but which his
compatriots were to possess.

The historian Bancroft said of that land: "Not a cape was turned, not a
river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." But the men of sandalled feet
had not yet penetrated so far in 1635. It is an interesting tribute to
these spiritual pioneers, however, that the particular rough coureur de
bois who first looked into that far valley of solitude, inhabited only by
Indians and buffaloes and other untamed beasts, would doubtless never have
left his Indian habits and returned to civilization if he could have lived
without the sacraments of the church.