“I looked at them and they looked at me. When I saw them getting ready to shoot their arrows at us, I levelled my arquebus which I had loaded with four balls and aimed straight at one of the chiefs. The shot brought down two and wounded another.” This day of fateful beginnings was two months before Hudson discovered the river that bears his name and eleven years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed upon the stern and rock-bound coast of America. One of our own poets, Bliss Carman, pictures the setting out of the expedition: “On such a day three hundred years ago By toilsome trails, and slow, But with the adventurer’s spirit all aflame The great discoverer came Finding another Indies that he guessed To reward his darling quest And fill the wonder-volume of Romance, The sailor of Little Brouage, the founder of New France, Sturdy, sagacious, plain Samuel de Champlain.” During the next few years Champlain crossed the sea almost annually and arranged for the development of the fur trade, for which he established a post on the site of the ancient Hochelaga and where Montreal now stands. Then he resumed his search for the great “Western Sea” which lured on these early adventurers, or some outlet through the great continent to the fabled land beyond; and in 1613 he followed up the waterway of the St. Lawrence by going up the Ottawa beyond where now is the capital of the Dominion of Canada. His journey really began when he left the end of the island of Montreal at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, where St. Anne de Bellevue now stands and where, many years after, Tom Moore, the famous Irish poet, lived for a short time and wrote the Canadian Boat Song.[7] He soon came back, his information having proved unreliable, and he returned to France to make his report on the fur trade and the state of the country. He set sail again in 1615 for New France, having with him four Franciscan Fathers called Récollet friars from the convent in Brouage, who were anxious to convert to Christianity the savages of this great new world of which Champlain had told them. He stayed but a short time at Quebec as he wished to follow up a party of Huron and Algonquin Indians who had gone up the Ottawa to gather the tribes for a raid against the Iroquois. With them went Father Le Caron, one of the Récollets who had come out from Brouage with Champlain. [Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE WARRIORS The advance party of a Mohawk war expedition has returned to Theonondiogo (Two Noses), the Mohawk capital (1634). They have brought with them two Mahikan Indian captives from the vicinity of Skanehtade (Albany).