From the Algonkin Indians in the neighbourhood of these St. Louis Rapids, and also from those living near Quebec, Champlain obtained a good deal of geographical information to add to his own observations.  He was given an idea, more or less correct, of Lake Ontario, the Falls of Niagara, Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and perhaps also of Lake Superior, a sea so vast, said the Amerindians, that the sun set on its horizon.  This sheet of water, Champlain calculated, must be 1200 miles distant to the west, and therefore identical with the “Mer du sud” (Pacific Ocean), which all North-American explorers for three centuries wished to reach.

After collecting much information about possible copper mines in the regions north and south of the Lower St. Lawrence, and of silver[8] in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, and a terrible story which he more than half believed about a monster of prodigious size, the Gougou,[9] Champlain set sail for France at the end of August, 1603.

[Footnote 8:  Or lead mixed with silver.  The local natives used this ore, which was white when beaten, for their arrowheads.]

[Footnote 9:  The Gougou dwelt on the small island of Miscon, to the east of the Bay of Chaleurs.  It had the form of a woman but was about a hundred feet high.  Its habit was to catch and devour men and women, whom it first placed in a pocket capacious enough to hold a small ship.  Its roarings and hissings could be heard at times coming from the island of Miscon, where the Gougou lay concealed.  Even a Frenchman, the Sieur Prevert, had heard these noises.  Probably this islet had a whirlpool communicating with a cavern into which fishermen were sucked by the current.]

In April, 1604, Champlain accompanied the Sieur de Monts (who had succeeded the dead Amyard de Chastes as head of a chartered fur-trading association) in a fresh expedition to North America, together with a hundred and twenty artisans and several noblemen.  They were to occupy the lands of “Cadie” (Acadia, Nova Scotia), Canada, and other places in New France.  De Monts thought Tadoussac and Quebec too cold in wintertime, and preferred the sunnier east coast regions.  He aimed indeed at colonizing what is now New England.

On the way to Nova Scotia, the expedition was nearly wrecked on Sable Island, about one hundred and twenty miles south of Cape Breton Island, and noticed there the large red cattle run wild from the bulls and cows landed on Sable Island by the Portuguese some sixty years earlier. (The Portuguese of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries deserved well of humanity for the generous way in which they left cattle, goats, pigs, and rabbits to run wild on desert islands and serve as provender for shipwrecked mariners like Robinson Crusoe.) Champlain also speaks of the “fine large black foxes” which he and other voyagers noticed on Sable Island.  How they came there is a mystery, unless the island had once been part of the mainland.