The way led from the St. Lawrence south, up the River Richelieu. Champlain's boat was a ponderous craft; and when the shiver of the sparkling rapids came with a roar through the dank forest, the heavy boat had to be sent back to Quebec. Adopting the light birch canoe of the Indian, Champlain went on, accompanied by only two white men. Of Indians, there were twenty-four canoes with sixty warriors. For the first part of the voyage night was made hideous by the grotesque war dances of the braves lashing themselves to fury by scalp raids in pantomime, or by the medicine men holding solemn converse with the demons of earth; the tent poles of the medicine lodge rocked as if by wind, while eldritch howls predicted victory. {47} Then the long line of silent canoes had spread out on that upland lake named after Champlain, the heavily forested Adirondacks breaking the sky line on one side, the Green Mountains rolling away on the other. Caution now marked all advance. The Indians paddled only at night, withdrawing to the wooded shore through the morning mist to hide in the undergrowth for the day. This was the land of the Iroquois. [Illustration: DEFEAT OF THE IROQUOIS (From Champlain's drawing)] On July 29, as the invaders were stealing silently along the west shore near Crown Point at night about ten o'clock, there were seen by the starlight, coming over the water with that peculiar galloping motion of paddlers dipping together, the Iroquois war canoes. Each side recognized the other, and the woods rang with shouts; but gathering clouds and the mist rising from the river screened the foes from mutual attack, though the night echoed to shout and countershout and challenge and abuse. Through the half light Champlain could see that the Iroquois were working like beavers erecting a barricade of logs. The assailants kept to their canoes under cover of bull-hide shields till daylight, when Champlain buckled on his armor--breastplate, helmet, thigh pieces--and landing, advanced. There were not less than two hundred Iroquois. Outnumbering the Hurons three times over, they uttered a jubilant whoop and {48} came on at a rush. Champlain and his two white men took aim. The foremost chiefs dropped in their tracks. Terrified by "the sticks that thundered and spat fire," the Iroquois fell back in amaze, halted, then fled. The victory was complete; but it left as a legacy to New France the undying enmity of the Iroquois. When Champlain came out from France in 1610, he would have repeated the raid; but a fight with invading Iroquois at the mouth of the Richelieu delayed him, and the expiration of De Monts' monopoly took him back to France.