The infant colony was quiet and contented. Furs were easily obtained for clothing in winter, and in summer very little clothing of any kind was necessary. The chief business of the then colonial merchants was the collection of furs for exportation. There were, properly speaking, no merchants in the country, but only factors, and other servants of the home Fur Company. The country was no more independently peopled than the Hudson's Bay Territory now is. The actual presence of either governor or sub-governor was unnecessary. Champlain only made an official tour of inspection to Mount Royal, explored the Ottawa, and returned to France. He was dissatisfied with the appearance of affairs, and persuaded the Prince of Conde, his chief, to really settle the country. The prince consented. A new company was formed through his influence, and, with some Roman Catholic Missionaries, Champlain again sailed for Canada, arriving at Quebec early in April, 1615--a proof that the winters were not more intense when Canada was first settled than at present. Indeed the intense cold of Lower Canada, compared with other countries in the same latitude, is not so much attributable to the want of cultivation as to the height of the land, and the immense gully formed by the St. Lawrence, and the great lakes which receive the cold blasts of the mountainous region which constitutes the Arctic highlands, and from which the rivers running to the northward into Hudson's Bay, and to the southward into the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, take their rise. The icy breath of the distant north and northwest sweeps down such rivers as the Ottawa, the St. Maurice, and the Saguenay, to be gathered into one vast channel, extending throughout Canada's whole extent. And, clear the forest as we may, Canada will always be the same cold, healthy country that it now is. Lower or rather Highland Canada, will be especially so, without, however, the general commercial prosperity of the country suffering much on that account. There are lowlands enough for a population far exceeding that now occupying the United States. But this is a digression. Champlain's Missionaries set themselves vigorously to the work of christianizing the heathen, while Champlain himself industriously began to fight them. He extended the olive branch from his left hand, and stabbed vigorously with a sword in his right hand. The Missionaries established churches, or rather the cross, from the head waters of the Saguenay to Lake Nepissing. Champlain battled the Iroquois from Mont Royal to Nepissing. Rather he _would_ have done so. He did not find them until he reached, overland and in canoes, Lake Huron, the superior character of the land in that neighbourhood attracting his particular attention. He found his "enemy" entrenched by "four successive palisades of fallen trees," says Smith, "enclosing a piece of ground containing a pond, with every other requisite for Indian warfare"--a very Sebastopol, upon which Champlain