"This shoreland is also remarkable, being so battered and frayed by sea and storm, and worn perhaps by arctic currents and glacier beds, that its natural front of some 250 miles is multiplied to an extent of not less than 2,500 miles of salt-water line; while at an average distance of about three miles from the mainland, stretches a chain of outposts consisting of more than three hundred islands, fragments of the main, striking in their diversity on the west; low, wooded and grassy to the water's edge, and rising eastward through bolder types to the crowns and cliffs of Mount Desert and Quoddy Head, an advancing series from beauty to sublimity: and behind all these are deep basins and broad river-mouths, affording convenient and spacious harbors, in many of which the navies of nations might safely ride at anchor.... Especially attractive was the region between the Piscataqua and Penobscot in its marvellous beauty of shore and sea, of island and inlet, of bay and river and harbor, surpassing any other equally extensive portion of the Atlantic coast, and compared by travellers earliest and latest, with the famed archipelago of the Aegean." _Vide Maine, Her Place in History_, by Joshua L. Chamberlain, LL D, President of Bowdoin College, Augusta, 1877, pp. 4-5. CHAPTER VI. ERECTION OF BUILDINGS AT QUEBEC.--THE SCURVY AND THE STARVING SAVAGES.-- DISCOVERY OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN, AND THE BATTLE AT TICONDEROGA.--CRUELTIES INFLICTED ON PRISONERS OF WAR, AND THE FESTIVAL AFTER VICTORY.-- CHAMPLAIN'S RETURN TO FRANCE AND HIS INTERVIEW WITH HENRY IV.--VOYAGE TO NEW FRANCE AND PLANS OF DISCOVERY.--BATTLE WITH THE IROQUOIS NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE RICHELIEU.--REPAIR OF BUILDINGS AT QUEBEC.--NEWS OF THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY IV.--CHAMPLAIN'S RETURN TO FRANCE AND HIS CONTRACT OF MARRIAGE.--VOYAGE TO QUEBEC IN 1611. On the 18th of September, 1608, Pont Gravé, having obtained his cargo of furs and peltry, sailed for France. The autumn was fully occupied by Champlain and his little band of colonists in completing the buildings and in making such other provisions as were needed against the rigors of the approaching winter. From the forest trees beams were hewed into shape with the axe, boards and plank were cut from the green wood with the saw, walls were reared from the rough stones gathered at the base of the cliff, and plots of land were cleared near the settlement, where wheat and rye were sown and grapevines planted, which successfully tested the good qualities of the soil and climate.