Champlain had had already a most adventurous life.  He was born about 1567, at Brouage, in the Saintonge, opposite to the Island of Heron, on the coast of western France.  From his earliest years he had a passion for the sea, but he also served as a soldier for six years.  His father had been a sea captain, and his uncle as an experienced navigator was commissioned by the King of Spain to transport by sea to that country the remainder of the Spanish soldiers who had been serving in Brittany.  The uncle took his nephew with him.  Young Champlain when in Spain managed to ingratiate himself so much with the Spanish authorities that he was actually commissioned as a captain to take a king’s ship out to the West Indies.  No sooner did he reach Spanish America than he availed himself of the first chance to explore it.  For two years he travelled over Cuba, and above all Mexico.  He visited the narrowest part of Central America and conceived the possibility of making a trans-oceanic canal across the Panama isthmus.

When he got back to France he placed before Henry IV a report on Spanish Central America, together with a project for making a canal at Panama.  Henry IV was so pleased with his work and enterprise that he gave him a pension and the title of Geographer to the King.  Shortly afterwards he met Governor de Chastes at Dieppe, and was by him sent out to Canada.  The ship which carried Champlain, PONT-GRAVE,[2] the SIEUR DE MONTS,[3] and other French adventurers (together with two Amerindian interpreters whom Pont-Grave had brought from Canada to learn French) arrived at Tadoussac on May 24, 1603.

[Footnote 2:  Correctly written this was Francois Grave, Sieur du Pont.]

[Footnote 3:  The full name was Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts.  Including de Champlain and de Poutrincourt, who will be described later, we have here the four great heroes who founded French Canada.]

Champlain lost no time in commencing his explorations.  Tadoussac was at the mouth of an important river, called by the French the Saguenay, a name which they also applied to the mysterious and wonderful country through which it flowed in the far north; a country rich in copper and possibly other precious metals.  Champlain ascended the Saguenay River for sixty miles as far as the rapids of Chicoutima.  The Amerindians whom he met here told him of Lake St. John, lying at a short distance to the west, and that beyond this lake and the many streams which entered it there lay a region of uplands strewn with other lakes and pools; and farther away still began the sloping of the land to the north till the traveller sighted a great arm of the salt sea, and found himself amongst tribes (probably the Eskimo) who ate raw flesh, and to the Indians appeared absolute savages.[4] This was probably the first allusion, recorded by a European, to the existence of Hudson’s Bay, that huge inlet of the sea, which is one of the leading features in the geography of British North America.