Chaplain served awhile in the army; when peace came his adventurous spirit led him to the West Indies. This was Spanish territory and the Frenchman went thither at the risk of his life. He spent two years in America. To him it seemed, as it had seemed to some Spanish and Portuguese officials, that it would be a good plan to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Champlain wrote, “If the four leagues of land which there are from Panama to the (Chagres) river were cut through, one might pass from the south sea to the ocean on the other side and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen hundred leagues; and from Panama to the Strait of Magellan would be an island and from Panama to the New-found lands would be another island, so that the whole of America would be in two islands.” Always on his voyages Champlain kept a diary and made maps of the lands he visited. When he returned to France, he gave the king a minute account of the colonies and treasure of Spain. It was shame to France, he thought, that on the New World, discovered more than a century before, only their enemies had a foothold. A French nobleman who was planning to found a colony in America decided that this enterprising young sailor-soldier would be the man to lead the undertaking. Champlain entered into the plan with enthusiasm. In 1603 he set out to reconnoiter the new land, following the route of Cartier. He sailed up the St. Lawrence River, to the present site of Montreal. During the next four years he made five voyages to the New World, exploring the coast from New England northward. He led a band of colonists who after a winter of hardship and sickness returned in 1607 to France. But Champlain was not discouraged. He was resolved to extend the power of France and of the Catholic religion in the new land, to penetrate the unknown wilds, and to seek a route to the East. He was appointed Lieutenant-governor of the French colony, an office which he held until his death, and came to America in 1608 to establish a settlement on the St. Lawrence River. In July the colonists landed and erected a store-house, the beginning of the city of Quebec. Five discontented men in the party formed a plot to kill Champlain and turn the fortress over to the Spaniards. One of the men, however, betrayed the plot; the conspirators were arrested, the ringleader was hanged, and the others were sent prisoners to France. The winter of 1609 found the French colony one of three in the New World. At Jamestown, in Virginia, were the English; at St. Augustine, in Florida, were the Spaniards; and far to the north at Quebec in Canada, were the French. No one could then guess which nation would finally become supreme, though the chances seemed in favor of the Spaniards.