Before returning to France, Champlain explored the river St. Lawrence as far as the Lachine Rapids. On the way up he anchored before Quebec, the situation of which he describes; doubtless he recognized it as the place near which Jacques Cartier and his men had spent their terrible winter. In passing Three Rivers he noticed how advantageously it was situated both for trade and for defence. He explored the country in the vicinity of the Lachine Rapids sufficiently to recognize that the land to his right, as he ascended, was an island (Montreal). Of the rapids themselves he says that never had he seen a torrent rushing with such impetuosity. Returning to Tadousac he proceeded down the river to Gaspe and Perce and entered the Baie des Chaleurs. After making, according to his custom, as many observations and inquiries as possible in regard to the character and outlines of the country, he returned to Tadousac, and, gathering his party, which had meanwhile been doing some profitable trading with the natives, set sail for France, where he arrived on the 20th September. M. de Chastes, under whose authority he and Pontgrave were acting, had died in the month of May. Champlain, therefore, went alone to court, exhibited to the king a map he had made of the country, and gave such information as to its resources and capabilities as he had personally gathered. The king was much interested; and, desiring that the work so well begun should be vigorously prosecuted, he issued a patent to a Huguenot gentleman, Pierre Dugas, Sieur de Monts and Governor of Pons conferring upon him exclusive trading privileges for a period of ten years not only in Canada, but in Acadia. The essential condition of this grant, it has been said, was the establishment in the countries mentioned of the "Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith"; but, if such was the case, the terms of the document seem a little lacking in precision, as they speak only of instructing the natives in the principles of Christianity and the knowledge of God, and thus bringing them to the light of faith and the practice of the Christian religion. As de Monts was a Huguenot the generality of these terms may not have been without significance.