It does not seem probable that the warlike nation that conquered all tribes with which it came in contact, having once gained complete possession, should relinquish it. A more reasonable conclusion is, that the country lying east of Lake Champlain was a debatable ground of these aboriginal tribes in the remote past, as it was more recently of civilized nations and states. Quebec, the town which Champlain had founded in 1608, did not begin to assume much importance till eighteen years afterward, when its wooden fortifications were rebuilt of stone. Nor was the place strong enough three years later to offer any resistance to the English fleet which, under the command of Sir David Kirk, then appeared before the city and presently took possession of it. The conquest was as lightly valued by King Charles I. of England as it had been easily made; and in 1634, by the treaty of St. Germain, Canada, Acadia, and Cape Breton were restored to France. Thenceforward, for more than a hundred years, these regained possessions of the French were a constant menace and danger to the English colonies in America. Advances toward the occupation of the country lying between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River were made slowly by both French and English, though the tide of predatory warfare often ebbed and flowed along the borders of the region and sometimes across it, along the courses of the larger tributary waterways, navigable almost to their narrow and shallow sources by the light birch of the Indian while there was open water, and an easy if crooked path for the snowshoe and toboggan when winter had paved the streams with ice. One of the earliest of such French incursions into New England was made after the failure of the attempt of De Callieres, the governor of Montreal, to capture New York, and all the English colonies in that province, when less important expeditions were organized against the New York and New England frontiers and the Sieur Hertel went from Trois Rivieres against the English fort at Salmon Falls in New Hampshire. At about the same time, in February, 1690, the expedition under Sieurs Helene and Mantet set forth by the way of Lake Champlain to destroy Schenectady. Both expeditions were organized by Count Frontenac for the purpose of inspiriting the Canadians and their Indian allies, who were sadly disheartened by the recent descent of the Iroquois upon Canada when Montreal had been sacked and destroyed, and most of the frontier settlements broken up. The wide expanse of pathless woods that lay between the outposts of the hostile colonies gave a false assurance of security to the English settlers, while to their enemies these same solitudes gave almost certain immunity from the chance of a forewarned prey. In the wintry wastes of forest, through which these marauding bands took their way, there ranged no unfriendly scout to spy their stealthy approach, and bear tidings of it to the doomed settlements.