Throughout the remainder of the sixteenth century the French kings were too much engrossed in great religious wars, fierce and bloody beyond belief but for existing proofs, to give thought or effort to extending their dominion in the New World. The treaty of Vervins with Spain and the Edict of Nantes, both occurring in 1598, gave France an interval of peace within and without. Henry IV (“Henry of Navarre”) at once turned his eyes to the coasts of America, on which as yet no Europeans had made any permanent settlements. His activity took the form of patronizing a series of trading voyages. On one of these, which sailed in 1603, he sent Samuel Champlain, then about thirty-five years of age, a gallant soldier and an experienced navigator. He had already visited the West Indies and the Isthmus of Darien, and in his journal of the voyage had foreshadowed the Panama Canal. He was now particularly charged with reporting on explorations and discoveries. On this voyage Champlain ascended the St. Lawrence to Montreal and vainly attempted to surmount the Lachine Rapids. On the return of the expedition in September of the same year, Champlain laid before the king a report and map. They gave such satisfaction as to lead to a similar appointment on an expedition sent out the following year. For three years Champlain was occupied in exploring and charting the coasts of Nova Scotia and New England, a thousand miles or thereabout. In 1608 he went out in the capacity of lieutenant-governor of New France, a post occupied for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life, with the exception of a brief interval. On July 3 he staked out the first plat of Quebec. His trifling official engagements left him ample leisure to prosecute those explorations on which his heart was set; chief of them the road to China.