X I E. R. A FL Y OF THE U N IVERSITY or ILLI NOIS 917.1 C35vEb 1922 v.l LlfiRARV THE VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS OF SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN VOL. I Photographic Facsimile (reduced) of Champlain's Map of New France, prepared in 1632. TheVoyages and Explorations of Samuel de Champlain 1604-1616 5 Narrated by Himself TRANSLATED BY Aitnie Nettleton Bourne together with TheVoyage of 1603 Reprinted from PURCHAS HIS PILGRIMES EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY Edward Gaylord Bourne Professsor of History in Yale Universitf ILLUSTRATED IN TWO VOLUMES Volume I MCMXXII ALLERTON BOOK CO. New York Copyright, 1904. by Williams-Barker Co. Printed in the United States of America v^ 1— J — 7./ SPECIAL INTRODUCTION The history of Western Civilization be- gins in a conflict with the Orient, a conflict of which it maybe the end is not yet. But the routes between East and West have been trodden by the caravans of trade more often even than by the feet of armies. The treasures of the East were long brought overland to Alexandria, or Constantinople, or the cities of the Levant, and thence dis- tributed to Europe by the galleys of Genoa or of Venice. But when the Turk placed himself astride the Bosporus, and made Egypt his feudatory, new routes had to be found. In the search for these were made the three greatest voyages in history, those of Columbus, of Vasco da Gama, and greatest of all—of Magellan. In his search for the riches of Cipangu Columbus stumbled upon America. The great Genoese lived and died under the il- lusion that he had reached the outmost verge of Asia ; and though even in his life- time men realized that what he had found :was no less than a new world, America 5444:61 INTRODUCTION was long looked on as an unwelcome ob- stacle of unknown extent across the path of the Eastern trader. Farther and far- ther men ranged the coast, seeking into every bay and estuary, in the vain hope that the South Sea might open to their gaze. To southwards, Magellan found a strait, but the journey was long and dan- gerous, and open only to the ships of Spain. To northwards France took up the search, and it was in quest of the Orient that Jacques Cartier put out from St. Malo. For a moment Chaleur Bay seemed to liim the strait of his dream, but soon he came to its end, "whereof we were much torn with grief," he says in his quaint old French. On his next voyage he went in vain up the St. Lawrence as far as Mon- treal ; but the terrors of a Canadian winter, with its attendant scurvy, and the still greater horrors of the Wars of Religion, for the next half-century restricted the French to fishing voyages to Newfound- land and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. With the Peace of Vervins and the Edict b£ Nantes in 1598, France had rest from for- eign and civil strife, and turned again to the nobler task of exploration. This was the quest to which the sea-captain of Brouage, Samuel de Champlain, gave the ii INTRODUCTION best years of his life, "always travelling with an hungry heart," with the great South Sea ever a day's journey in advance. Tired at last, he gave himself up to estab- lish on the rock of Quebec a station from which his successors might fare forth. In his search for the South Sea he had been the first great explorer of Canada, and this series of 'Trail Makers of the North" appropriately begins with his undaunted name. As the new world opened out, the search for the Orient took a second place. Even in the days of Champlain, his partners thought chiefly of trade with the natives^ and in the next two centuries a series of great fur-trading companies, English and French, took toll of the country, and pushed ever farther west and north. Among these, too, there were great-hearted dreamers, men who "yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down," and of such was Alexander Mackenzie. His great voyage to the mouth of the mighty river which bears his name was made in 1789; four years later he had pierced the Rockies, and come out upon the shores of the Pacific ; first of white men to cross the continent by land, the Highland Scot had made true the dream of Champlain. iii INTRODUCTION As the West revealed its vastness, men gave themselves to its exploration. An- other great fur-trader, indefatigable as Mac- kenzie, was the New Englander, Daniel Williams Harmon. If his voyages did less for geography, they tell us even more of the manners and customs of the old lords of the prairies, ere yet Canada had entered upon the experiment of seeking to make in the West a great civilization from the off- scourings of Europe. To these records has been added "The Wild North Land," a journal of the youth- ful travels of the late General Sir William Butler. The record of his adventures adds hardly less than Harmon to our knowledge of a vanishing race, and also shows that in these later days the hardihood of the Celt is as cheery and as unflinching as in the day of Champlain and of Mackenzie. To the travels of Mackenzie, Harmon and Butler I have contributed short intro- ductions. That to the voyages of Cham- plain is by the late Professor Bourne of Yale, whose premature death is mourned by every student of early American history. W. L. Grant. IV INTRODUCTION Samuel de Champlain was the first ex- plorer to make a detailed examination of the coast of New England and Nova Scotia and to prepare a full and accurate report of his observations. To him, likewise, we are indebted for our earliest exact accounts of the Indians of New England, eastern Canada and New York. To the Canadian he is more than the explorer and the acute observer of the native life ; he is the founder of New France and at the same time the chief of its early historians. To the stu- dent of history to-day, in addition to all this, he stands forth as perhaps the ablest of the earlier makers of America, a leader of in- defatigable energy and sterling character, a Frenchman who devoted his life to extend- ing the name and power of France and the civilizing influences of the Church. His fame is impregnably established and grows with the lapse of time and the extension of knowledge of his work. In view of all these facts it is surprising that his writings have to so slight a degree V INTRODUCTION been accessible to the English reader. His earliest account of the Indians of the St. Lawrence River region, published in Paris in 1604 under the title Des Sauvages, ou, Voyage de Sammuel Champlain de Brouage faict en la France Nouvelle, Van mil six cens trois, was made English and published in Purchas His Pilgrimes, London, 1625. In 1859 the Hakluyt Society brought out an English version of his Brief Discours des choses plus remarquables que Sammuel Champlain de Brouage a reconneues aux hides Occidentalles an voiage qu'il en a faict en iceles en I'annee mil V^. IIII^^ XIX & en I'annee mil Vi'^ I (1598-1601), under the title Narrative of a Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico, i^pg-1602. The original remained unpublished until 1870, when the Abbe Laverdiere published his CEuvres de Champlain. It was not until 1878, some 270 years after his exploration of the New England coast, that New Englanders and others un- familiar with French could read the earliest descriptions of the shores since so rich in historic associations, whose picturesque va- riety of scenery and invigorating air have rendered them familiar and even dear to thousands of fortunate sojourners from every part of our country who have only vi INTRODUCTION this transitory connection with New Eng- land. In that year the Prince Society began the pubhcation, under the learned edi- torial care of Reverend Edmund F. Slafter, of an English translation of all of Cham- plain's narratives of explorations on the New England coast, in New York, and in Canada down to the year 1617, when his activity in exploration gave place to efforts to build up Quebec. The translation was entrusted to a highly competent scholar, the late Charles Pomeroy Otis, at that time Professor of Modern Languages in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The translation, the editorial notes and the biog- raphy of Champlain by Mr. Slafter, formed a whole which was highly honorable to American scholarship and imposed lasting obligations upon every student of Cham- plain's career. Yet the edition was strictly limited and is now to be found only in the richer public or private collections of Americana. Equally scarce and expensive is Laverdiere's collected edition of Cham- plain's works in the original. It remains true, then, even after all the loving labors that Laverdiere, Slafter and Otis have devoted to the publication and elucidation of Champlain's writings, that they are still a closed book to that rapidly vii INTRODUCTION growing body of readers who are interested in the original narratives of the explorers, the earliest observations of the Indians as yet uncontaminated by contact with Euro- peans, and the local history of New England and Canada. No more fitting addition, therefore, to The Trailmakers' Series could be made than a satisfactory popular edition of Champlain's own narrative of his ex- plorations.