Having previously constructed a skiff for the purpose, Pont Gravé and Champlain, with five sailors and two Indians with a canoe, attempted to pass the falls. But after a long and persevering trial, exploring the shores on foot for some miles, they found any further progress quite impossible with their present equipment. They accordingly abandoned the undertaking and set out on their return to Tadoussac. They made short stops at various points, enabling Champlain to pursue his investigations with thoroughness and deliberation. He interrogated the Indians as to the course and extent of the St. Lawrence, as well as that of the other large rivers, the location of the lakes and falls, and the outlines and general features of the country, making rude drawings or maps to illustrate what the Indians found difficult otherwise to explain. [31] The savages also exhibited to them specimens of native copper, which they represented as having been obtained from the distant north, doubtless from the neighborhood of Lake Superior. On reaching Tadoussac, they made another excursion in one of the barques as far as Gaspé, observing the rivers, bays, and coves along the route. When they had completed their trade with the Indians and had secured from them a valuable collection of furs, they commenced their return voyage to France, touching at several important points, and obtaining from the natives some general hints in regard to the existence of certain mines about the head waters of the Bay of Fundy. Before leaving, one of the Sagamores placed his son in charge of Pont Gravé, that he might see the wonders of France, thus exhibiting a commendable appreciation of the advantages of foreign travel. They also obtained the gift of an Iroquois woman, who had been taken in war, and was soon to be immolated as one of the victims at a cannibal feast. Besides these, they took with them also four other natives, a man from the coast of La Cadie, and a woman and two boys from Canada. The two little barques left Gaspé on the 24th of August; on the 5th of September they were at the fishing stations on the Grand Banks, and on the 20th of the same month arrived at Havre de Grâce, having been absent six months and six days. Champlain received on his arrival the painful intelligence that the Commander de Chastes, his friend and patron, under whose auspices the late expedition had been conducted, had died on the 13th of May preceding. This event was a personal grief as well as a serious calamity to him, as it deprived him of an intimate and valued friend, and cast a cloud over the bright visions that floated before him of discoveries and colonies in the New World. He lost no time in repairing to the court, where he laid before his sovereign, Henry IV., a map constructed by his own hand of the regions which he had just visited, together with a very particular narrative of the voyage.