Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/131

 chief of the three races then occupying the basin of the St. Lawrence, and in learning from them the capabilities of their country. In a terrible struggle then going on between the Algonquins and their neighbors, the Iroquois, or Five Nations, Champlain was able to give both advice and material assistance, and, as a reward, he was escorted by the former, in the spring of 1610, up the St. Lawrence as far as its junction with the Iroquois, now the Richelieu River, ascending which he discovered Lake Peter, and came, after some little difficulty with the rapids, so characteristic of the tributaries of the great river, to the beautiful sheet of water now bearing his own name, and which has so often figured in the history of the struggle between the French and English in Canada.

THE FIRST HOUSE ERECTED IN QUEBEC.

Though prevented by the hostility of the Iroquois, or Five Nations—occupying the whole of the South-west of Canada—from actually visiting them, Champlain, on this trip, approached very nearly the sources of the Hudson in the lofty Adirondack Mountains, on the south-west of the great lake, and in the north-eastern corner of the present State of New York, thus connecting his own work with that of his great Dutch contemporary.

The discovery of Lakes Peter and Champlain may be said to have closed