was important that the capital should be a place naturally strong in a military point of view--"natura fortis," as the motto of the city of Quebec has it--and of comparatively easy access from the sea; and these obvious advantages Quebec possessed in a much higher degree than Montreal. De Monts was at last convinced that, under existing conditions, there was no money in the enterprise to which he was committed. Others could engage in the fur trade as freely as he, without having any establishments in Canada to keep up; so he willingly resigned his empty honours as lieutenant-general, in order to see what he could do as a private trader, or private member of a trading company. The office of lieutenant-general passed into the hands of a more powerful person, the Duke of Conde, who wisely made Champlain his lieutenant, and under whose auspices a powerful company was formed, consisting of all the traders of Rouen and St. Malo who wished to join it. The merchants of La Rochelle had also been invited to take a share in the enterprise, but they held off, and were consequently left out of the arrangement. Champlain had returned to France in September 1611, and the difficulties and oppositions of one kind and another to which the organization of the new company gave rise kept him there till the spring of 1613, when, again setting sail for Canada, he arrived at Quebec about the 1st of May. It was in the early summer of this year that he made his celebrated trip up the Ottawa River as far as Allumette Island, about one hundred miles above the city of Ottawa, after which he again returned to France.