"As we watched the gathering shadows my thoughts went back two hundred years, to the time when Champlain went on his first trip up the 'Riviere des Algoumequins,' as he called it. About two years before he took the trip he sent Nicholas de Vignan, a young Frenchman, up the river with some friendly Indians, and Nicholas had returned with the marvellous story that he had reached the North Sea. He said that the journey could be made in a few days. He also gave an account of having seen the wreck of an English ship. "Champlain was completely taken in, and lost no time in starting off to verify the discovery for which the world had been looking for some time. His fleet consisted of two canoes with two Indians and three Frenchmen, one of whom was De Vignan. It was in May, when the river was at its height. When they reached the Gatineau the Indians told him that their tribe were often compelled to conceal themselves amid the hills of the Upper Gatineau from their dreaded enemies, the Iroquois. When Champlain beheld the twin curtain falls yonder, 'like a slow dropping veil of the thinnest lawn,' he exclaimed, 'Le Rideau! Le Rideau!' The Indians told him that the waters formed an arcade under which they delighted to walk, and where they were only wet by the spray. As they rounded the lofty headland opposite he saw the cloud of mist rising from the falls, which the Indians called the 'Asticou,' which means 'Chaudiere' in French, or 'kettle' in English, for the water has worn out a deep basin into which it rushes with a whirling motion which boils up in the midst like a kettle. "You have probably been close enough to have seen it, Madame?" he said, addressing Mrs. Wright. "No," she replied, "I have always been too timid to venture so near to it in a canoe." "Champlain said," continued Mr. Papineau, "that he paddled as near as possible to the falls, when the Indians took the canoes and the Frenchmen and himself carried their arms and provisions. He described with great feeling the sharp and rugged rocks of the portages to pass the falls and rapids until at last, in the afternoon, they embarked upon the peaceful waters of a lake where, he said, there were very beautiful islands filled with vines and with walnut and other agreeable trees." "There are no walnuts on the islands of Lake Chaudiere," interrupted Bearie, "I am quite sure." "He probably saw a butternut tree," said young Louis Joseph, "and thought it produced walnuts."