For more than half a century after Cartier’s final return to France, the St. Lawrence was practically abandoned to its native tribes. In 1608, however, another famous son of Old France sailed up the St. Lawrence and landed with his men at the foot of the same towering rock upon which the Indian town of Stadacona had formerly stood. Nothing now remained of Donnacona’s capital, or of the tribe that once occupied the district. The Iroquois, who in Cartier’s day dwelt along the borders of the St. Lawrence from Stadacona to Hochelaga, had for some unaccountable reason abandoned this part of the country, and were now settled between Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario. Champlain and those who came after him were to find a very different welcome from the descendants of the Indians who had welcomed Jacques Cartier to Stadacona and Hochelaga. Somewhere near the market-place of the Lower Town, Champlain’s men fell to work to lay the foundations of Quebec. One may get some idea of the appearance of the group of buildings, Champlain’s _Abitation_, from his own rough sketch in the _Voyages_. "My first care," he says, "was to build a house within which to store our provisions. This was promptly and competently done through the activity of my men, and under my own supervision. Near by is the St. Croix River, where of yore Cartier spent a winter. While carpenters toiled and other mechanics were at work on the house, the others were busy making a clearance about our future abode; for as the land seemed fertile, I was anxious to plant a garden and determine whether wheat and other cereals could not be grown to advantage." All Champlain’s men were not, however, so innocently engaged. There was a traitor in the camp. The story is told by Champlain himself, and by the historian Lescarbot. It has been re-told, in his characteristically simple and graphic manner, by Francis Parkman. "Champlain was one morning directing his labourers when Têtu, his pilot, approached him with an anxious countenance, and muttered a request to speak with him in private. Champlain assenting, they withdrew to the neighbouring woods, when the pilot disburdened himself of his secret. One Antoine Natel, a locksmith, smitten by conscience or fear, had revealed to him a conspiracy to murder his commander and deliver Quebec into the hands of the Basques and Spaniards then at Tadoussac. Another locksmith, named Duval, was author of the plot, and, with the aid of three accomplices, had befooled or frightened nearly all the company into taking part in it. Each was assured that he should make his fortune, and all were mutually pledged to poniard the first betrayer of the secret. The critical point of their enterprise was the killing of Champlain. Some were for strangling him, some for raising a false alarm in the night and shooting him as he came out from his quarters.