This was the basis upon which, arrangements were made for Champlain’s next journey to the interior, the longest and most daring enterprise in his whole career of exploration.  In 1615 the Brouage navigator with a small party once again ascended the Ottawa, crossed to Lake Nipissing and thence made his way down the French.  River to the Georgian Bay, or Lake of the Hurons as it was then called.  Near the shores of the bay he found the villages of the Hurons with the Recollet Father Le Caron already at work among the tribesmen.  Adding a large band of Indians to his party, the explorer-now struck southeast and, by following the chain of small lakes and rivers which lie between Matchedash Bay and the Bay of Quinte, he eventually reached Lake Ontario.  The territory pleased Champlain greatly, and he recorded his enthusiastic opinion of its fertility.  Crossing the head of Lake Ontario in their canoes the party then headed for the country of the Iroquois south of Oneida Lake, where lay a palisaded village of the Onondagas.  This they attacked, but after three hours’ fighting were repulsed, Champlain being wounded in the knee by an Iroquois arrow.

The eleven Frenchmen with their horde of Indians then retreated cautiously; but the Onondagas made no serious attempt at pursuit, and in due course Champlain with his party recrossed Lake Ontario safely.  The Frenchmen were now eager to get back to Quebec by descending the St. Lawrence, but their Indian allies would not hear of this desertion.  The whole expedition therefore plodded on to the shores of the Georgian Bay, following a route somewhat north of the one by which it had come.  There the Frenchmen spent a tedious winter.  Champlain was anxious to make use of the time by exploring the upper lakes, but the task of settling some wretched feuds among his Huron and Algonquin friends took most of his time and energy.  The winter gave him opportunity, however, to learn a great deal more about the daily life of the savages, their abodes, their customs, their agriculture, their amusements, and their folklore.  All this information went into his journals and would have been of priceless value had not the Jesuits who came later proved to be such untiring chroniclers of every detail.

When spring came, Champlain left the Huron country and by way of Lake Nipissing and the Ottawa once more reached his own people at Quebec.  It took him forty days to make the journey from the Georgian Bay to the present site of Montreal.

Arriving at Quebec, where he was hailed as one risen from the dead, Champlain found that things in France had taken a new turn.  They had, in fact, taken many twists and turns during the nine years since De Monts had financed the first voyage to the St. Lawrence.  In the first place, De Monts had lost the last vestige of his influence at court; as a Huguenot he could not expect to have retained it under the stern regency which followed the assassination of Henry iv in