It was not until three years after de Chauvin built his trading-post at Tadoussac that the Saguenay was actually explored. Champlain and Pont-Gravé had sailed from Honfleur, in March 1603, on the _Bonne-Renommée_, to explore the country and find some more suitable place than Tadoussac for a permanent settlement. After meeting a number of friendly Indians at Tadoussac, Champlain determined to explore the Saguenay, and actually sailed up to the head of navigation, a little above the present town of Chicoutimi. By shrewd questions he learned from the Indians that above the rapids the river was navigable for some distance, that it was again broken by rapids at its outlet from a big lake (Lake St. John), that three rivers fell into this lake, and that beyond these rivers were strange tribes who lived on the borders of the sea. This sea was the great bay, as yet undiscovered, where Henry Hudson was seven years later to win an imperishable name, and die a victim to the treachery of his crew. In 1608 Champlain again visited Tadoussac, on his way up the St. Lawrence to lay the foundations of Quebec. His companion, Pont-Gravé, had arrived in another vessel a few days before, armed with the King’s commission granting him a monopoly of the fur-trade for one year. When he reached Tadoussac he found the enterprising Basques already on the ground, and carrying on a brisk trade with the Indians. They treated the royal letters with contempt, ridiculed Pont-Gravé’s monopoly, and, finally boarding his ship, carried off his guns and ammunition. The opportune arrival of Champlain, however, brought them to terms, and they finally agreed to return to their legitimate occupation of catching whales, leaving the fur-trade, for a time at least, to Pont-Gravé and Champlain. The Indians who chiefly frequented Tadoussac at this time were of the tribe called Montagnais. Their hunting-ground was the country drained by the Saguenay, and they acted as middlemen for the tribes of the far north, bringing their furs down to the French at Tadoussac, and carrying back the prized trinkets of the white man, which they no doubt bartered to their northerly neighbours at an exorbitant profit. "Indefatigable canoe-men," says Parkman, "in their birchen vessels, light as egg-shells, they threaded the devious tracks of countless rippling streams, shady by-ways of the forest, where the wild duck scarcely finds depth to swim; then descended to their mart along those scenes of picturesque yet dreary grandeur which steam has made familiar to modern tourists. With slowly moving paddles, they glided beneath the cliff whose shaggy brows frown across the zenith, and whose base the deep waves wash with a hoarse and hollow cadence; and they passed the sepulchral Bay of the Trinity, dark as the tide of Acheron,--a sanctuary of solitude and silence: depths which, as the fable runs, no sounding-line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling eagle seems a speck."