Their movement along the great rivers and the lakes had been very slow at first; but it had quickened from generation to generation, and was now rapid enough to fix the attention of any man who could hear news and had his eyes abroad upon what was happening about him. Jacques Cartier had explored the noble river St. Lawrence for his royal master of France a long century and a half ago, in the far year 1535, fifty years before the English so much as attempted a settlement. But it was not until 1608, the year after Jamestown was begun, that Samuel de Champlain established the first permanent French settlement, at Quebec, and there were still but two hundred lonely settlers there when nearly thirty years more had gone by (1636). It was the quick growth and systematic explorations of the latter part of the century that made the English uneasy. The twelve thousand Frenchmen who were busy at the work of occupation when William of Orange became King had not confined themselves to the settlements long ago made in the Bay of Fundy and at Montreal, Quebec, and Tadousac, where the great river of the north broadened to the sea. They had carried their boats across from the upper waters of the Ottawa to the open reaches of Lake Huron; had penetrated thence to Lake Michigan, and even to the farthest shores of Lake Superior, establishing forts and trading posts as they advanced. They had crossed from Green Bay in Lake Michigan to the waters of the Wisconsin River, and had passed by that easy way into the Mississippi itself. That stout-hearted pioneer Père Marquette had descended the Father of Waters past the Ohio to the outlet of the Arkansas (1673); and Robert La Salle had followed him and gone all the long way to the spreading mouths of the vast river and the gates of the Gulf (1682), not by way of the Wisconsin, but by crossing from the southern end of Lake Michigan to the stream of the Illinois, and passing by that way to the Mississippi. [Illustration: SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN]