The French colonies differed in many respects from the British, but in one particular most essentially. The story of the British settlements which has already been told is the story of the progress of communities; in the case of the French colonies the history is really composed of a long series of entrancing biographies. The record of Canada from 1608 to 1635 is in fact the biography of Samuel Champlain. His first exploit was the erection of a _habitation_ at Quebec in 1608, his two main objects being to support exploration and encourage missionary work. He thus established the French nation in Canada less than twelve months after the settlement of the British in Virginia; the two rival nations, therefore, started their great work of colonisation at practically the same moment. The progress and results of their settlements resembled each other in no single item. Not content with founding Quebec, the adventurous Frenchmen left Pontgravé to encourage commerce and pushed up the St Lawrence. In 1609 he discovered the Lake that still bears his name; and for the first time came into direct hostile contact with the warriors of the Five Nations, whom he defeated at Ticonderoga. In the same year he returned to France, but re-sailed to Canada in 1610, leaving a few months afterwards for his native country. On landing in France he was dismayed to find that his patron, Henry of Navarre, had been assassinated by the fanatic Ravaillac in the streets of Paris. The year 1611 found the intrepid voyager once again in Canada preparing the way for a French settlement at Montreal. The great change in France, and indeed throughout Europe, caused by Henry IV.'s untimely end, was felt with almost equal intensity in the far-distant region of Canada. A new system was immediately inaugurated, and that most unsatisfactory Regent, Marie de Medici, appointed the Count de Soissons as supreme Governor of New France. Before the Count could take over his unaccustomed duties, he died, and the Prince de Condé was nominated in his place. Champlain was at once created his deputy, with the main work of regulating the fur-trade and keeping some semblance of order amongst the turbulent French backwoodsmen. Champlain's objects, however, were neither commercial nor pecuniary. His ambition soared above the merely lucrative, and he looked to the increase of French possessions, and if possible by means of the great waterways to the discovery of a short route to China and the East. It was for this latter reason that he was persuaded by Nicholas Vignau, one of his companions who had passed the previous winter among the northern Indians, to explore toilfully the waters of the upper Ottawa in 1613; Vignau having concocted a story about an outlet to the east, a fabrication which, when discovered after many hardships, nearly cost him his life.