behind them so ill provided for that eleven died during the winter of disease and hardship. The rest would have died of starvation had not friendly Indians supplied them with food. Chauvin made two more trips to the St. Lawrence without doing anything to redeem his engagements, and in the year 1601 he died. The death of Chauvin having voided his patent, the king was moved to constitute Knight Commander de Chastes, Governor of Dieppe, his representative in the western world. A company was formed, and an expedition was organized and placed under the command of Pontgrave, as a man having special knowledge of the St. Lawrence navigation. By request of de Chastes, Champlain was associated with him. At this time Champlain was thirty-six years of age, and had already distinguished himself as soldier, sailor, explorer, and geographer. His chief work in the two latter characters had been done in connection with a voyage which he had made to the West Indies and Mexico in one of the vessels of the King of Spain. On his return he described the places he had visited in a work, still extant, illustrated by curious maps and pictures of his own drawing. Champlain had higher views than mere money making and no more valuable man could have been assigned to the expedition. Setting sail with Pontgrave from Honfleur on the 15th March 1603, he arrived at Tadousac on the 24th May. How earnestly he was bent on carrying the Catholic faith into the wilds of Canada is shown by a conversation he reports having had with an Algonquin chief, into whose mind he was trying to instil correct views as to the origin of things, and particularly of the human race. The Algonquin had been under the impression that the Creator had placed arrows in the ground, and then turned them into men. Champlain assured him that this was an error, man having been made in the first place out of clay, and woman from a rib taken from his side while he slept. He dwelt somewhat also on the propriety and duty of the invocation of saints, with a view, as the Abbe Faillon hints,[1] to counteracting any prejudice against that doctrine which Chauvin and his companions, who were Calvinists, might have endeavoured to create in the savage mind. Judging, however, by the Algonquin's replies to Champlain's catechising, his mental attitude was one of admirable neutrality, securely founded on nescience, regarding any or all of the doctrines in debate between Rome and Geneva. Chauvin had attended strictly to business.