At last, one evening, as Champlain and his men were canoeing down the lake, they met the Indians of the Five Nations. There were two hundred Indians in this army; but the sixty friendly Indians were not afraid, because they had Champlain with them. "When the Five Nations see the guns of the Frenchmen," said the chiefs among themselves, "and hear them speak noise and fire and death, they will be so afraid that they will run away and we will win the battle."

It was too late to fight that night, so both little armies waited until the sun rose on the lake the next morning. During all the long hours they stayed near each other, and in the darkness they each called the others cowards. They made a great noise, I can tell you.

Well, the fight began the next morning, and then the army of the Five Nations had a great surprise. The first thing they saw was a white man in gleaming armor, who held a gun in his hands, and had a gleaming sword in his belt. The Indians shot their arrows at this white man, but the arrows did not do any more harm than if they had been shot at a rock. Then Champlain aimed his gun and shot bullets, and two of the chiefs of the Five Nations fell down dead. Two other Frenchmen shot bullets and more chiefs fell dead. Now, the Five Nations had never seen men killed in this way before. They could not see the bullets that went so fast through the air, and they thought that the white men had killed their chiefs with a noise; so the army of the Five Nations grew very much afraid. One of the Indians began to run, then another, then another, and soon their whole army was running away. The Indians who were with Champlain ran after them, shooting them with their arrows, killing and catching very many. I think that both sides were very cruel, and it seems to me sometimes that Champlain, though he was a brave man and a very wise man, would have done better if he had kept out of all their quarrels; for, from that day, the Five Nations were always the enemies of the French, and would never let the French go to the south, where they wanted to go.

After this, came busy years for the brave Samuel Champlain. He had found his new country for France, and every year he traveled over it and learned more about it. He traded with the Indians for their beautiful furs and sent them to France, where the fine ladies of the Court wore them in the winter. Champlain sent a young Frenchman to study the Indian languages, so that Champlain could talk to them in their own way, and he sent an Indian to France to learn to speak French.

But Champlain was too brave to stay always in Quebec, and so every now and then he would go on a great trip. Once he went north to find a great salt sea that a Frenchman had told him about. It was one of the hardest and most dangerous trips that a man ever took. There were great swamps, where Champlain sank to his waist; and deep forests, where the bushes and brushwood were so thick and dense that he had to cut his way with a great knife before taking a step. And all these hardships were useless, for there really wasn't any great salt sea; so, of course, they never found it.

Then Champlain went on a second long journey to the west. He traveled with the friendly Indians for many weeks, till at last they came upon the town of the Five Nations. You would have been surprised to see that town. It was not like other cities, with streets, and stores, and brick houses, and electric cars. It was just a few plain, long, one-story houses, as big as theatres. In these houses were a lot of little rooms, and in each room a family of Indians. Around the town were four rows of stakes, like telegraph poles, and the Indians stood behind these poles when they shot their arrows.

This time the Indians who were with Champlain were beaten in the fight, because they would not do as the Frenchman told them. Even Champlain himself was shot twice in the leg, and the Indians had to carry him away in a basket that they fastened to their backs. You see, they were friends of Champlain, and they did not want him to be caught and killed by the Indians of the Five Nations.

That was a hard winter for Champlain. The Indians who were friendly to him wanted him to stay with them, and when he asked for a guide to show him the way back to his home in Quebec, they would not let him go. You see, Champlain did not know this country as well as the Indians did, and he was afraid of getting lost in the forest; but the Indians treated him well, and when the spring came around again they took him home to his city of Quebec.

After this, Champlain worked day and night to build up his new country. He tried very hard to make it pleasant for the people who lived in Quebec, and always tried to get more Frenchmen to come from France and live in the new country. Every year he took the long journey across the ocean and told everybody there of the wonderful land of America. Of all the things in the world, what Champlain most wanted was to make this new France even greater and more beautiful than the old France.

I think that if Champlain had not been a very patient man, he would have many a time given up Quebec and gone back to France to lead a peaceful, quiet life. Often things went very bad indeed. New people did not cross the ocean as fast as Champlain wanted them to, and those who did come grumbled and quarreled. Often, too, the food gave out and the people got sick and many starved. But Champlain, though he was now a pretty old man, would never give up. Once some English warships sailed into the harbor and asked Champlain to give up the city to them. The brave Frenchman had hardly any soldiers; but he said, "No; I will never give up my city of New France. As long as I have a man or a bullet left, I will never give up the city of Quebec." And after a while, the English captain became frightened because he thought that Champlain might have a big army, and so he sailed away; but the next year three more English vessels sailed up the harbor, and as this time Champlain had only sixteen half-starved men, he had to surrender. But England did not long keep the city. It was handed back to France, and Champlain was again sent out to Quebec as commander over the little town.

So Samuel Champlain, the boy who had dreamed of New France, now went back once more to that country; but his days were almost over. He became very ill, and, after lying in bed for more than two months, he died an old man, at the age of sixty-eight years.

Many, many years later, there was a great war between France and England, and after the war was over the whole country of New France was given to England. The English changed the name of the country to Canada; but even now there are more than a million people living there who speak French, and who are the children of the children of the children for many generations, of the men who lived with Champlain. And even now, after three hundred years, these Frenchmen, and other people in Canada, and people all over the world for that matter, revere the name of the great and good Champlain, and call him, as they used to call him so long ago, "The Father of New France."