As they advanced the river widened out; the Indian canoes carried them safely over the broad stream shimmering in the summer sun till they came to a great silent lake over one hundred miles long, hitherto unexplored. The beauty of the new country is described with enthusiasm by the delighted explorer, but they were now in the Mohawk country and progress was fraught with danger. They travelled only by night and lay hidden by day in the depth of the forest, till they had reached the far end of the lake, named Lake Champlain after its discoverer. They were near the rocky promontory where Fort Ticonderoga was afterwards built, when they met a party of Iroquois; war-cries pealed across the waters of the lake, and by daybreak battle could no longer be averted. Champlain and his two companions, in doublet and hose, buckled on their breastplates, cuisses of steel and plumed helmets, and with sword and arquebus advanced. Their firearms won the day, but all hope of further advance was at an end, and Champlain returned to Quebec with his great story of new lands to the south. It was not till the spring of 1611 that he was again free to start on another exploring expedition into the heart of Canada. [Illustration: THE DEFEAT OF THE IROQUOIS BY CHAMPLAIN AND HIS PARTY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN. From a drawing in Champlain's _Voyages_, 1613.] His journey to the rapids of the St. Louis has been well described: "Like specks on the broad bosom of the waters, two pigmy vessels held their course up the lonely St. Lawrence. They passed abandoned Tadoussac, the channel of Orleans, the tenantless rock of Quebec, the wide Lake of St. Peter with its crowded archipelago, and the forest plain of Montreal. All was solitude. Hochelaga had vanished, and of the savage population that Cartier had found sixty-eight years before, no trace remained." In a skiff with a few Indians, Champlain tried to pass the rapids of St. Louis; but oars, paddles, and poles alike proved vain against the foaming surges, and he was forced to return, but not till the Indians had drawn for him rude plans of the river above, with its chain of rapids and its lakes and its cataracts. They were quite impassable, said the natives, though, indeed, to these white strangers everything seemed possible. "These white men must have fallen from the clouds," they said. "How else could they have reached us through the woods and rapids which even we find it hard to pass?" Champlain wanted to get to the upper waters of the Ottawa River, to the land of the cannibal Nipissings, who dwelt on the lake that bears their name; but they were enemies, and the natives refused to advance into their country.