Champlain probably thought he was at last to realise the dream of his life. Accompanied by Vignau, four other Frenchmen, and an Indian guide, he ascended the great river, with its numerous lakes, cataracts, and islets. He saw the beautiful fall to which ever since has been given the name of Rideau--a name also extended to the river, whose waters make the descent at this point--on account of its striking resemblance to a white curtain. Next he looked into the deep chasm of mist, foam, and raging waters, which the Indians called Asticou or Cauldron (Chaudiere), on whose sides and adjacent islets, then thickly wooded, now stand great mills where the electric light flashes amid the long steel saws as they cut into the huge pine logs which the forests of the Ottawa yearly contribute to the commerce and wealth of Canada. At the Chaudiere the Indians evoked the spirits of the waters, and offered them gifts of tobacco if they would ward off misfortune. The expedition then passed up the noble expansion of the river known as the Chats, and saw other lakes and cataracts that gave variety and grandeur to the scenery of the river of the Algonquins, as it was then called, and reached at last, after a difficult portage, the country around Allumette lake, where Nicholas de Vignau had passed the previous winter. Two hundred and fifty-four years later, on an August day, a farmer unearthed on this old {79} portage route in the district of North Renfrew, an old brass astrolabe of Paris make, dated 1603; the instrument used in those distant days for taking astronomical observations and ascertaining the latitude. No doubt it had belonged to Champlain, who lost it on this very portage by way of Muskrat and Mud lakes, as from this place he ceases to give us the correct latitudes which he had previously been able to do. [Illustration: Champlain's lost astrolabe.] Among the Algonquin Indians of this district, who lived in rudely-built bark cabins or camps, and were hunters as well as cultivators of the soil, he soon found out that there was not a word of truth in the story which Nicholas de Vignau had told him {80} of a journey to a northern sea, but that it was the invention of "the most impudent liar whom I have seen for a long time." Champlain did not punish him, though the Indians urged him to put him to death.