Voyages of Samuel De Champlain — Volume 01Champlain, Samuel de
History
Voyages of Samuel De Champlain — Volume 01
Champlain, Samuel de
America -- Discovery and exploration -- French; Indians of North America -- Canada; New France -- Discovery and exploration
land is mountainous, although very good and productive, and better than in
any place they had seen. The Iroquois dwell some fifty or sixty leagues
from this great lake. This is what they told me they had seen, which
differs but very little from the statement of the former savages.
On the same day we went about three leagues, nearly to the Isle aux
Coudres. On Thursday, the tenth of the month, we came within about a league
and a half of Hare Island, on the north shore, where other Indians came to
our barque, among whom was a young Algonquin who had travelled a great deal
in the aforesaid great lake. We questioned him very particularly, as we had
the other savages. He told us that, some two or three leagues beyond the
fall we had seen, there is a river extending to the place where the
Algonquins dwell, and that, proceeding up the great river, there are five
falls, some eight or nine leagues from the first to the last, past three of
which they carry their canoes, and in the other two drag them; that each
one of these falls is, perhaps, a quarter of a league long. Then they enter
a lake some fifteen leagues in extent, after which they pass five other
falls, extending from the first to the last some twenty to twenty-five
leagues, only two of which they pass in their canoes, while at the three
others they drag them. After this, they enter a very large lake, some three
hundred leagues in length. Proceeding some hundred leagues in this lake,
they come to a very large island, beyond which the water is good; but that,
upon going some hundred leagues farther, the water has become somewhat bad,
and, upon reaching the end of the lake, it is perfectly salt. That there is
a fall about a league wide, where a very large mass of water falls into
said lake; that, when this fall is passed, one sees no more land on either
side, but only a sea so large that they have never seen the end of it, nor
heard that any one has; that the sun sets on the right of this lake, at the
entrance to which there is a river extending towards the Algonquins, and
another towards the Iroquois, by way of which they go to war; that the
country of the Iroquois is somewhat mountainous, though very fertile, there
being there a great amount of Indian corn and other products which they do
not have in their own country. That the territory of the Algonquins is low
and fertile.
I asked them whether they had knowledge of any mines. They told us that
there was a nation called the good Iroquois, [212] who come to barter for
the articles of merchandise which the French vessels furnish the
Algonquins, who say that, towards the north, there is a mine of pure
copper, some bracelets made from which they showed us, which they had
obtained from the good Iroquois; [213] that, if we wished to go there, they
would guide those who might be deputed for this object.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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