http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20090519/NEWS02/90518026/1009/NEWS01
In May of 1609, Samuel de Champlain was very likely too busy preparing for a season of inland exploration to document his activities. Previous and subsequent journal entries suggest that native accounts of trade routes inspired his eagerness to travel.
Contemporary reports of English expeditions to the north and south of Quebec added a competitive flavor to French efforts.
In 1608, Champlain and his men embarked upstream (northwest) from a trading post at Tadoussac on the Saguenay River. They found little game, but Champlain took note of the natives’ descriptions of what lay far beyond the river’s headwaters: a seacoast and a potential link with Asia. The following is an excerpt from “The Voyages of Samuel de Champlain,” translated by Charles Pomeroy Otis and published in Boston in 1878. The journals are in the public domain, and can be found online at www.gutenberg.org. “Of the three rivers which flow into this lake (Lac Saint-Jean), one comes from the north, very near the sea, where they consider it much colder than in their own country; and the other two from other directions in the interior, where are migratory savages, living only from hunting, and where our savages carry the merchandise we give them for their furs, such as beaver, marten, lynx, and otter, which are found there in large numbers, and which they then carry to our vessels. “These people of the north report to our savages that they see the salt sea; and, if that is true, as I think it certainly is, it can be nothing but a gulf entering the interior on the north. “The savages say that the distance from the north sea to the port of Tadoussac is perhaps forty-five or fifty days’ journey, in consequence of the difficulties presented by the roads, rivers, and country, which is very mountainous, and where there is snow for the most part of the year. This is what I have definitely ascertained in regard to this river. “I have often wished to explore it, but could not do so without the savages, who were unwilling that I or any of our party should accompany them. Nevertheless, they have promised that I shall do so.” In 1610, Henry Hudson and a group of explorers beat the French to the bay that now bears his name. But the rigors of an ice-bound winter (and Hudson’s insistence that the expedition continue in the spring) prompted Hudson’s crew to mutiny and leave him adrift in a rowboat, never to be heard from again. Contact Joel Banner Baird at 660-1843 or [email protected]. To have Free Press headlines delivered free to your e-mail, sign up at www.burlingtonfreepress.com.
it was very helpful
Posted by: kt | February 10, 2012 at 12:58 PM