In these ancient wilds, to whose ever verdant antiquity the pyramids are
young and Nineveh a mushroom of yesterday; where the sage wanderer of
the Odyssey, could he have urged his pilgrimage so far, would have
surveyed the same grand and stern monotony, the same dark sweep of
melancholy woods;--here, while New England was a solitude, and the
settlers of Virginia scarcely dared venture inland beyond the sound of a
cannon-shot, Champlain was planting on shores and islands the emblems of
his faith. Of the pioneers of the North American forests, his name
stands foremost on the list. It was he who struck the deepest and
boldest strokes into the heart of their pristine barbarism. At
Chantilly, at Fontainebleau, Paris, in the cabinets of princes and of
royalty itself, mingling with the proud vanities of the court; then lost
from sight in the depths of Canada, the companion of savages, sharer of
their toils, privations, and battles, more hardy, patient, and bold than
they;--such, for successive years, were the alternations of this man's
life.
To follow on his trail once more. His Indians said that the rapids of
the river above were impassable. Nicolas de Vignan affirmed the
contrary; but, from the first, Vignau had been found always in the
wrong. His aim seems to have been to involve his leader in difficulties,
and disgust him with a journey which must soon result in exposing the
imposture which had occasioned it.
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