the settlement of the country, he bent his energies to its development.
He had scarcely settled his little colony in its new home ere he began to
experience the perils of his quasi-regal position. Notwithstanding
the patent of monopoly held by his patron, on the faith of which his
colonization scheme had been projected, the rights conferred by it began to
be infringed by certain traders who came over from France and instituted
a system of traffic with the natives. Finding the traffic exceedingly
profitable, these traders ere long held out inducements to some of
Champlain's followers. A conspiracy was formed against him and he narrowly
escaped assassination. Fortunately, one of the traitors was seized by
remorse, and revealed the plot before it had been fully carried out. The
chief conspirator was hanged, and his accomplices were sent over to France,
where they expiated their crime at the galleys. Having thus promptly
suppressed the first insurrection within his dominions, Champlain prepared
himself for the rigours of a Canadian winter. An embankment was formed
above the reach of the tide, and a stock of provisions was laid in
sufficient for the support of the settlement until spring. The colony,
inclusive of Champlain himself, consisted of twenty-nine persons.
Notwithstanding all precautions, the scurvy broke out among them during the
winter. Champlain, who was endowed with a vigorous constitution, escaped
the pest, but before the advent of spring the little colony was reduced
to only nine persons. The sovereign remedy which Cartier had found so
efficacious in a similar emergency was not to be found. That remedy was
a decoction prepared by the Indians from a tree which they called
_Auneda_--believed to have been a species of spruce--but the natives of
Champlain's day knew nothing of the remedy, from which he concluded that
the tribe which had employed it on behalf of Cartier and his men had been
exterminated by their enemies.

With spring, succours and fresh immigrants arrived from France, and new