but the Indians were delighted at the beauty and manners of the Governor's wife, then only twenty-two years of age. They tell of her that she wore always a small mirror suspended from her neck, according to the custom of the ladies in those days. When the red-men who drew near her looked in the little mirror they saw each, to his astonishment, his own face reflected there, and went about telling one another that the beautiful wife of the white chief cherished an image of each in her heart. Once in Quebec, Champlain lost no time in laying the foundation of a Government House, since known as the Château of St. Louis, reared on the heights of {42} the rock. This building came to be the residence of every succeeding Governor of Canada for two hundred years, until one night it was wholly destroyed by fire and never rebuilt. In the year it was begun, too, the Recollet priests began to build their convent, and other large buildings arose. So now you see quite a flourishing little town was fast growing up in the midst of the Canadian wilderness. But with the advancement of his schemes came many new troubles for the lion-hearted Champlain. In the first place, the Indians had acquired a passion for strong drink--"fire-water" they called it,--and although people of their fierce, reckless disposition should never have been allowed to touch a drop, yet the fur-traders were so callous and greedy as to be always ready to supply them with gallons and hogsheads of the fatal brandy. The consequences were what might have been expected, and Champlain was very angry as he looked upon the scenes of riot and bloodshed. But his efforts to keep liquor from the Indians only made the traders hate him more bitterly. To this source of anxiety was added another: the bloodthirsty feud between the Iroquois and the Algonquins and Hurons, which occasioned constant bloody massacres and made the life of the French colonists at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Tadoussac one of never-ending danger. On a certain night a band crept down the St. Lawrence silently to Quebec, having sworn an oath to wipe the city of the pale-faces from the face of the earth. But the stone buildings, the cannon and muskets in the hands of the determined Frenchmen {43} daunted them and they beat a retreat. Not to be wholly balked of blood, they fell upon the Algonquins, who were bringing furs to Quebec, slaughtering them without mercy. Then there were plots against Quebec, even amongst the tribes which Champlain considered friendly, for savages were, and ever will be, fickle, and often the most trifling incident will tempt them to treachery.