1838. The subject of this sketch was educated at St. Mary’s College,

Montreal, taking a classical course, including mathematics and natural philosophy; he afterwards studied law; was admitted to the bar of Lower Canada in October, 1866, and practised his profession until 1870. He joined, as lieutenant, the 4th battalion in the year 1865; served on the frontier during the Fenian raid of 1866; was transferred in 1870 to the Quebec rifle regiment of the North-West expeditionary force under Colonel (now General, Sir) Garnet Wolseley; remained stationed in the North-West till February, 1872, being transferred in July, 1872, to the School of Gunnery, Quebec, and gazetted to B battery as lieutenant with rank of captain; was adjutant of the School of Gunnery B battery, August, 1873, till February, 1880. He went to Woolwich, England, for a special course in the Royal Arsenal, and on his return was appointed superintendent of the government cartridge factory at Quebec, and still holds that appointment. In 1882 he was sent by the minister of militia and defence, Sir A. P. Caron, to England to purchase machinery required for a small ammunition factory to be erected in the government buildings in Quebec. The plans, specifications, alterations to buildings, placing machinery, including boilers and steam engines, and putting the whole plant in working order, was done under his immediate supervision, bringing forth his ability as a practical engineer, and his scientific attainments. This factory has now been at work since 1883. It produced 2,000,000 rounds of ball ammunition, in three months, during the North-West rebellion of 1885, and now supplies the whole Dominion with service ammunition. It can give employment to four hundred hands. He submitted to a board of artillery officers in September, 1886, a new projectile for light and heavy rifled guns, which increased the range and accuracy of guns in a remarkable degree. A foundry, in connection with the cartridge factory, was erected for the manufacture of these projectiles, in July, 1887, and the work now goes on daily. Thus two entirely novel industries have been started in Canada, and the military efficiency of the Dominion increased. In 1876 he travelled through France, Italy, Austria, Hungary and Germany, being authorized to visit the imperial arsenal at Vienna, and obtain information with regard to the new field ordnance and carriages at that time introduced into the Austrian service. Major Prévost was married on 25th May, 1874, to Louisa J., daughter of Hon. Juschereau Duchesnay, of Quebec, ex-senator for the division of Lassale, province of Quebec; seigneur of the seigniories of Fossambault and Gaudarville. Hon. Mr. Duchesnay’s father commanded a company of _Voltigeurs_ under Colonel de Salaberry, his cousin, at the victorious battle of Chateauguay, in 1812. The Juschereau Duchesnay family were connected to Robert Giffard, first seigneur of Beauport, near Quebec, to whom this seigniory had been granted in 1635 by the “Compagnie de la Nouvelle France,” under authority of the French King. The Duchesnays inherited this seigniory in 1668, and they owned it for over two hundred years. * * * * * =Champlain, Samuel de.=—Standing on the summit of one of the rocky eminences at the mouth of the Saguenay, and looking back through the haze of two hundred and eighty-five years, we may descry two small sailing craft slowly making their way up the majestic stream which Jacques Cartier, sixty-eight years before, christened in honor of St. Lawrence. The vessels are French build, and have evidently just arrived from France. They are of very diminutive size for an ocean voyage, but are manned by hardy Breton mariners for whom the tempestuous Atlantic has no terrors. They are commanded by an enterprising merchant-sailor of St. Malo, who is desirous of pushing his fortunes by means of the fur trade, and who, with that end in view, has already more than once navigated the St. Lawrence as far westward as the mouth of the Saguenay. His name is Pontgravé. Like other French adventurers of his time, he is a brave and energetic man, ready to do, to dare, and, if need be, to suffer; but his primary object in life is to amass wealth, and to effect this object he is not over-scrupulous as to the means employed. On this occasion he has come over with instructions from Henry IV., King of France, to explore the St. Lawrence, to ascertain how far from its mouth navigation is practicable, and to make a survey of the country on its banks. He is accompanied on the expedition by a man of widely different mould; a man who is worth a thousand of such sordid, huckstering spirits; a man who unites with the courage and energy of a soldier a high sense of personal honor and a singleness of heart worthy of the Chevalier Bayard himself. To these qualities are added an absorbing passion for colonization, and a piety and zeal which would not misbecome a Jesuit missionary. He is poor, but what the poet calls “the jingling of the guinea” has no charms for him. Let others consume their souls in heaping up riches, in chaffering with the Indians for the skins of wild beasts, and in selling the same to the affluent traders in France. It is his ambition to rear the _fleur-de-lis_ in the remote wilderness of the New World, and to evangelize the savage hordes by whom that world is peopled. The latter object is the most dear to his heart of all, and he has already recorded his belief that the salvation of one soul is of more importance than the founding of an empire. After such an exordium it is scarcely necessary to inform the student of history that the name of Pontgravé’s ally is Samuel De Champlain. He had already figured somewhat conspicuously in his country’s annals, but his future achievements were destined to outshine the events of his previous career, and to gain for him the merited title of “Father of New France.” He was born some time in the year 1567, at Brouage, a small seaport town in the province of Saintonge, on the west coast of France. Part of his youth was spent in the naval service, and during the wars of the League he fought on the side of the King, who awarded him a small pension and attached him to his own person. But Champlain was of too adventurous a turn of mind to feel at home in the confined atmosphere of a royal court, and soon languished for change of scene. Erelong he obtained command of a vessel bound for the West Indies, where he remained more than two years. During that time he distinguished himself as a brave and efficient officer. He became known as one whose nature partook largely of the romantic element, but who, nevertheless, had ever an eye to the practical. Several important engineering projects seem to have engaged his attention during his sojourn in the West Indies. Prominent among these was the project of constructing a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Panama, but the scheme was not encouraged, and ultimately fell to the ground. Upon his return to France he again dangled about the court for a few months, by which time he had once more become heartily weary of a life of inaction. With the accession of Henry IV. to the French throne the long religious wars which had so long distracted the country came to an end, and the attention of the government began to be directed to the colonization of New France—a scheme which had never been wholly abandoned but which had remained in abeyance since the failure of the expedition undertaken by the brothers Roberval, more than half a century before. Several new attempts were made at this time, none of which were very successful. The fur trade, however, held out great inducements to private enterprise, and stimulated the cupidity of the merchants of Dieppe, Rouen and St. Malo. In the heart of one of them something nobler than cupidity was aroused. In 1603, M. De Chastes, governor of Dieppe, obtained a patent from the King conferring upon him and several of his associates a monopoly of the fur trade of New France. To M. De Chastes the acquisition of wealth—of which he already had enough, and to spare—was a matter of secondary importance, but he hoped to make his patent the means of extending the French empire into the unknown regions of the far West. The patent was granted soon after Champlain’s return from the West Indies, and just as the pleasures of the court were beginning to pall upon him. He had served under De Chastes during the latter years of the war of the League, and the governor was no stranger to the young man’s skill, energy, and incorruptible integrity. De Chastes urged him to join the expedition, which was precisely of a kind to find favor in the eyes of an ardent adventurer like Champlain. The King’s consent having been obtained, he joined the expedition under Pontgravé, and sailed for the mouth of the St. Lawrence on the 15th of March, 1603. The expedition, as we have seen, was merely preliminary to more specific and extended operations. The ocean voyage, which was a tempestuous one, occupied more than two months, and they did not reach the St. Lawrence until the latter end of May. They sailed up as far as Tadousac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, where a little trading-post had been established four years before by Pontgravé and Chauvin. Here they cast anchor, and a fleet of canoes filled with wondering natives gathered round their little barques to sell peltries, and (unconsciously) to sit for Champlain for their portraits. After a short stay at Tadousac the leaders of the expedition, accompanied by several of the crew, embarked in a batteau and proceeded up the river past deserted Stadacona to the site of the Indian village of Hochelaga, discovered by Jacques Cartier in 1535. The village so graphically described by that navigator had ceased to exist, and the tribe which had inhabited it at the time of his visit had given place to a few Algonquin Indians. Our adventurers essayed to ascend the river still farther, but found it impossible to make headway against the rapids of St. Louis, which had formerly presented an insuperable barrier to Cartier’s westward progress. Then they retraced their course down the river to Tadousac, re-embarked on board their vessels, and made all sail for France. When they arrived there they found that their patron, De Chastes, had died during their absence, and that his company had been dissolved. Very soon afterwards, however, the scheme of colonization was taken up by the Sieur, de Monts, who entered into engagements with Champlain for another voyage to the New World. De Monts and Champlain set sail on the 7th of March, 1604, with a large expedition, and in due course reached the shores of Nova Scotia, then called Acadie. After an absence of three years, during which Champlain explored the coast as far southward as Cape Cod, the expedition returned to France. A good deal had been learned as to the topographical features of the country lying near the coast, but little had been done in the way of actual colonization. The next expedition was productive of greater results. De Monts, at Champlain’s instigation, resolved to found a settlement on the shores of the St. Lawrence. Two vessels were fitted up at his expense and placed under Champlain’s command, with Pontgravé as lieutenant of the expedition, which put to sea in the month of April, 1608, and reached the mouth of the Saguenay early in June. Pontgravé began a series of trading operations with the Indians at Tadousac, while Champlain proceeded up the river to fix upon an advantageous site for the projected settlement. This site he found at the confluence of the St. Charles with the St. Lawrence, near the place where Jacques Cartier had spent the winter of 1535-6. Tradition tells us that when Cartier’s sailors beheld the adjacent promontory of Cape Diamond they exclaimed, “_Quel bec!_”—(“What a beak!”)—which exclamation led to the place being called _Quebec_. The most probable derivation of the name, however, is the Indian word _kebec_, signifying a strait, which might well have been applied by the natives to the narrowing of the river at this place. Whatever may be the origin of the name, here it was that Champlain, on the 3rd of July, 1608, founded his settlement, and Quebec was the name which he bestowed upon it. This was the first permanent settlement of Europeans on the American continent, with the exception of those at St. Augustine, in Florida, and Jamestown, in Virginia. Champlain’s first attempts at settlement, as might be expected, were of a very primitive character. He erected rude barracks, and cleared a few small patches of ground adjacent thereto, which he sowed with wheat and rye. Perceiving that the fur trade might be turned to good account in promoting the settlement of the country, he bent his energies to its development. He had scarcely settled his little colony in its new home ere he began to experience the perils of his quasi-regal position. Notwithstanding the patent of monopoly held by his patron, on the faith of which his colonization scheme had been projected, the rights conferred by it began to be infringed by certain traders who came over from France and instituted a system of traffic with the natives. Finding the traffic exceedingly profitable, these traders erelong held out inducements to some of Champlain’s followers. A conspiracy was formed against him, and he narrowly escaped assassination. Fortunately, one of the traitors was seized by remorse, and revealed the plot before it had been fully carried out. The chief conspirator was hanged, and his accomplices were sent over to France, where they expiated their crime at the galleys. Having thus promptly suppressed the first insurrection within his dominions, Champlain prepared himself for the rigours of a Canadian winter. An embankment was formed above the reach of the tide, and a stock of provisions was laid in sufficient for the support of the settlement until spring. The colony, inclusive of Champlain himself, consisted of twenty-nine persons. Notwithstanding all precautions, the scurvy broke out among them during the winter. Champlain, who was endowed with a vigorous constitution, escaped the pest, but before the advent of spring the little colony was reduced to only nine persons. The sovereign remedy which Cartier had found so efficacious in a similar emergency was not to be obtained. That remedy was a decoction prepared by the Indians from a tree which they called _Auneda_—believed to have been a species of spruce—but the natives of Champlain’s day knew nothing of the remedy, from which he concluded that the tribe which had employed it on behalf of Cartier and his men had been exterminated by their enemies. With spring, succours and fresh immigrants arrived from France, and new vitality was imported into the little colony. Soon after this time, Champlain committed the most impolitic act of his life. The Hurons, Algonquins, and other tribes of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, resolved upon taking the war-path against their enemies, the Iroquois, or Five Nations—the boldest, fiercest, and most powerful confederacy known to Indian history. Champlain, ever since his arrival in the country, had done his utmost to win the favor of the natives with whom he was brought more immediately into contact, and he deemed that by joining them in opposing the Iroquois, who were a standing menace to his colony, he would knit the Hurons and Algonquins to the side of the King of France by permanent and indissoluble ties. To some extent he was right, but he underestimated the strength of the foe, an alliance with whom would have been of more importance than an alliance with all the other Indian tribes of New France. Champlain cast in his lot with the Hurons and Algonquins, and accompanied them on their expedition against their enemies. By so doing he invoked the deadly animosity of the latter against the French for all time to come. He did not foresee that by this one stroke of policy he was paving the way for a subsequent alliance between the Iroquois and the English. On May 28th, 1609, in company with his Indian allies, he started on the expedition, the immediate results of which were so insignificant—the remote results of which were so momentous. The war-party embarked in canoes, ascended the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Richelieu—then called the River of the Iroquois—and thence up the latter stream to the lake which Champlain then beheld for the first time, and which until that day no European eye had ever looked upon. This picturesque sheet of water was thenceforward called after him, and in its name his own is still perpetuated. The party held on their course to the head waters of the lake, near to which several Iroquois villages were situated. The enemy’s scouts received the intelligence of the approach of the invaders, and advanced to repel them. The opposing forces met in the forest on the south-western shore, not far from Crown Point, on the morning of the 30th of July. The Iroquois, two hundred in number, advanced to the onset. “Among them,” says Mr. Parkman, “could be seen several chiefs, conspicuous by their tall plumes. Some bore shields of wood and hide, and some were covered with a kind of armour made of tough twigs, interlaced with a vegetable fibre, supposed by Champlain to be cotton. The allies, growing anxious, called with loud cries for their champion, and opened their ranks that he might pass to the front. He did so, and advancing before his red companions-in-arms stood revealed to the astonished gaze of the Iroquois, who, beholding the warlike apparition in their path, stared in mute amazement. But his arquebuse was levelled; the report startled the woods, a chief fell dead, and another by his side rolled among the bushes. Then there arose from the allies a yell which, says Champlain, would have drowned a thunder-clap, and the forest was full of whizzing arrows. For a moment the Iroquois stood firm, and sent back their arrows lustily; but when another and another gunshot came from the thickets on their flank they broke and fled in uncontrollable terror. Swifter than hounds, the allies tore through the bushes in pursuit. Some of the Iroquois were killed, more were taken. Camp, canoes, provisions, all were abandoned, and many weapons flung down in the panic fight. The arquebuse had done its work. The victory was complete.” The victorious allies, much to the disgust of Champlain, tortured their prisoners in the most barbarous fashion, and returned to Quebec, taking with them fifty Iroquois scalps. Thus was the first Indian blood shed by the white man in Canada. The man who shed it was a European and a Christian, who had not even the excuse of provocation. This is a matter worth bearing in mind when we read of the frightful atrocities committed by the Iroquois upon the whites in after years. Champlain’s conduct on this occasion seems incapable of defence, and it was certainly a very grave error, considered simply as an act of policy. The error was bitterly and fiercely avenged, and for every Indian who fell on the morning of that 30th of July, in this, the first battle fought on Canadian soil between natives and Europeans, a ten-fold penalty was exacted. “Thus did New France rush into collision with the redoubted warriors of the Five Nations. Here was the beginning, in some measure doubtless the cause, of a long succession of murderous conflicts, bearing havoc and flame to generations yet unborn. Champlain had invaded the tiger’s den; and now, in smothered fury the patient savage would lie biding his day of blood.” Six weeks after the performance of this exploit, Champlain, accompanied by Pontgravé, returned to France. Upon his arrival at court he found De Monts there, trying to secure a renewal of his patent of monopoly, which had been revoked in consequence of loud complaints on the part of other French merchants who were desirous of participating in the profits arising from the fur trade. His efforts to obtain a renewal proving unsuccessful, De Monts determined to carry on his scheme of colonization unaided by royal patronage. Allying himself with some affluent merchants of Rochelle, he fitted out another expedition, and once more despatched Champlain to the New World. Champlain, upon his arrival at Tadousac, found his former Indian allies preparing for another descent upon the Iroquois, in which undertaking he again joined them; the inducement this time being a promise on the part of the Indians to pilot him up the great streams leading from the interior, whereby he hoped to discover a passage to the North Sea, and thence to China and the Indies. In this second expedition he was less successful than in the former one. The opposing forces met near the confluence of the Richelieu and St. Lawrence rivers, and though Champlain’s allies were ultimately victorious, they sustained a heavy loss, and he himself was wounded in the neck by an arrow. After the battle, the torture-fires were lighted, as was usual on such occasions, and Champlain for the first time was an eye-witness to the horrors of cannibalism. He soon afterwards began his preparations for an expedition up the Ottawa, but just as he was about to start on the journey, a ship arrived from France with intelligence that King Henry had fallen a victim to the dagger of Ravaillac. The accession of a new sovereign to the French throne might materially affect De Monts’ ability to continue his scheme, and Champlain once more set sail for France to confer with his patron. The late king, while deeming it impolitic to continue the monopoly in De Monts’ favor, had always countenanced the latter’s colonization schemes in New France; but upon Champlain’s arrival he found that with the death of Henry IV. De Monts’ court influence had ceased, and that his western scheme must stand or fall on its own merits. Champlain, in order to retrieve his patron’s fortunes as far as might be, again returned to Canada in the following spring, resolved to build a trading post far up the St. Lawrence, where it would be easily accessible to the Indian hunters on the Ottawa. The spot selected was near the site of the former village of Hochelaga, near the confluence of the two great rivers of Canada. The post was built on the site now occupied by the hospital of the Grey Nuns of Montreal, and even before its erection was completed a horde of rival French traders appeared on the scene. This drove Champlain once more back to France, but he soon found that the ardor of De Monts for colonization had cooled, and that he was not disposed to concern himself further in the enterprise. Champlain, being thus left to his own resources, determined to seek another patron, and succeeded in enlisting the sympathy of the Count de Soissons, who obtained the appointment of lieutenant-general of New France, and invested Champlain with the functions of that office as his deputy. The count did not long survive, but Henry de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, succeeded to his privileges, and continued Champlain in his high office. In the spring of 1613 Champlain again betook himself to Canada, and arrived at Quebec early in May. Before the end of the month he started on his long deferred tour of western exploration. Taking with him two canoes, containing an Indian and four Frenchmen, he ascended the Ottawa in the hope of reaching China and Japan by way of Hudson’s Bay, which had been discovered by Hendrick Hudson only three years before. In undertaking this journey Champlain had been misled by a French impostor called Nicholas Vignan, who professed to have explored the route far inland beyond the head waters of the Ottawa, which river, he averred, had its source in a lake connected with the North Sea. The enthusiastic explorer, relying upon the good faith of Vignan, proceeded westward to beyond Lake Coulange, and after a tedious and perilous voyage, stopped to confer with Tessouat, an Indian chief, whose tribe inhabited that remote region. This potentate, upon being apprised of the object of their journey, undeceived Champlain as to Vignan’s character for veracity, and satisfied him that the Frenchman had never passed further west than Tessouat’s own dominions. Vignan, after a good deal of prevarication, confessed that his story was false, and that what the Indian Chief had stated was a simple fact. Champlain, weary and disgusted, abandoned his exploration, and returned to Quebec, leaving Vignan with the Indians in the wilderness of the Upper Ottawa. His next visit to France, which took place during the summer of the same year, was fraught with important results to the colony. A new company was formed under the auspices of the Prince of Condé, and a scheme was laid for the propagation of the gospel among the Indians by means of Recollet missionaries to be sent out from France for the purpose. These, who were the first priests who settled in Canada, came out with Champlain in May, 1615. A province was assigned to each of them, and they at once entered upon the duties of their respective mission. One of them settled among the Montagnais, near the mouth of the Saguenay; two of them remained at Quebec; and the fourth, whose name was Le Caron, betook himself to the far western wilds. Champlain then entered upon a more extended tour of westward exploration than any he had hitherto undertaken. Accompanied by an interpreter and a number of Algonquins as guides, he again ascended the Ottawa, passed the Isle of Allumettes, and thence to Lake Nipissing. After a short stay here he continued his journey, and descended the stream since known as French River, into the inlet of Lake Huron, now called Georgian Bay. Paddling southward, past the innumerable islands on the eastern coast of the bay, he landed near the present site of Penetanguishene, and thence followed an Indian trail leading through the ancient country of the Hurons, now forming the northern part of the county of Simcoe, and the north-eastern part of the county of Grey. This country contained seventeen or eighteen villages, and a population, including women and children, of about twenty thousand. One of the villages visited by Champlain, called Cahiague, occupied a site near the present town of Orillia. At another village, called Carhagouha, some distance farther west, the explorer found the Recollet friar Le Caron, who had accompanied him from France, only a few months before, as above mentioned. And here, on the 12th of August, 1615, Le Caron celebrated, in Champlain’s presence, the first mass ever heard in the wilderness of western Canada. After spending some time in the Huron country, Champlain accompanied the natives on an expedition against their hereditary foes, the Iroquois, whose domain occupied what is now the central and western part of the State of New York. Crossing Lake Couchiching, and coasting down the north-eastern shore of Lake Simcoe, they made their way across country to the Bay of Quinté, thence into Lake Ontario, and thence into the enemy’s country. Having landed, they concealed their canoes in the woods and marched inland. On the 10th of October, they came to a Seneca[7] village, on or near a lake which was probably Lake Canandaigua. The Hurons attacked the village, but were repulsed by the fierce Iroquois, Champlain himself being several times wounded in the assault. The invading war-party then retreated and abandoned the campaign, placing their wounded in the centre, while armed warriors guarded the front and rear, returning to where they had hidden their canoes, in which they embarked and made the best of their way back across Lake Ontario, where the party broke up. The Hurons had promised Champlain that if he would accompany them on their expedition against the Iroquois, they would afterwards furnish him with an escort back to Quebec. This promise they now declined to make good. Champlain’s prestige as an invincible champion was gone, and, wounded and dispirited, he was compelled to accompany them back to their country near Lake Simcoe, where he spent the winter in the lodge of Durantal, one of their chiefs. Upon his return to Quebec in the following year, he was welcomed as one risen from the dead. Hitherto, Champlain’s love of adventure had led him to devote more attention to exploration than to the consolidation of his power in New France. He determined to change his policy in this respect, and crossed over to France to induce a larger emigration. In July, 1620, he returned with Madame de Champlain, who was received with great demonstrations of respect and affection by the Indians upon her arrival at Quebec. Champlain found that the colony had rather retrograded than advanced during his absence, and for some time after his return various causes contributed to retard its prosperity. At the end of the year, 1621,[8] the European population of New France numbered only forty-eight persons. Rival trading companies continued to fight for the supremacy in the colony, and any man less patient and persevering than the Father of New France, would have abandoned his schemes in despair. This untoward state of things continued until 1627, when an association, known to history by the name of “The Company of the One Hundred Associates,” was formed under the patronage of the great Cardinal Richelieu. The association was invested with the vice-royalty of New France and Florida, together with very extensive auxiliary privileges, including a monopoly of the fur trade, the right to confer titles and appoint judges, and generally to carry on the government of the colony. In return for these truly vice-regal privileges the company undertook to send out a large number of colonists, and to provide them with the necessaries of life for a term of three years, after which land enough for their support and grain wherewith to plant it was to be given them. Champlain himself was appointed governor. This great company was scarcely organized before war broke out between France and England. The English resolved upon the conquest of Canada, and sent out a fleet to the St. Lawrence, under the command of Sir David Kertk. The fleet having arrived before Quebec, its commander demanded from Champlain a surrender of the place, and as the governor’s supply of food and ammunition was too small to enable him to sustain a siege, he signed a capitulation and surrendered. He then hastened to France, where he influenced the cabinet to stipulate for the restoration of Canada to the French Crown, in the articles of peace which were shortly afterwards negotiated between the two powers. In 1632, this restoration was effected, and next year Champlain again returned in the capacity of governor. From this time forward he strove to promote the prosperity of the colony by every means in his power. Among the means whereby he zealously strove to effect this object, was the establishment of Jesuit missions for the conversion of the Indians. Among other missions so established was that in the far western Huron country, around which the _Relations des Jesuites_ have cast such a halo of romance. The Father of New France did not live to gather much fruit from the crop which he had sown. His life of incessant fatigue at last proved too much even for his vigorous frame. After an illness which lasted for ten weeks, he died on Christmas Day, 1635, at the age of sixty-eight. His beautiful young wife, who had shared his exile for four years, returned to France. But few particulars have been preserved with reference to Madame de Champlain’s life. Her maiden name was Helen Boullé, and she was the sister of a friend and fellow-navigator of her husband’s. After her return to France she renounced the Protestant faith, and became a devout Roman Catholic. Having resolved upon adopting a conventual life, she became an Ursuline nun, under the name of Mother Helen de St. Augustine. She founded a convent at Meaux, in which she immured herself during the remainder of her life. She survived her husband nearly nineteen years, and died on the 20th of December, 1654, at the age of fifty-six. There was no issue of the marriage, and the patrimony descended to a cousin of the founder of New France. Champlain’s body was interred in the vaults of a little Recollet Church in the Lower Town, Quebec city. This church was subsequently burned to the ground, and its very site was not certainly known until recent times. In the year 1867, some workmen were employed in laying water-pipes beneath the flight of stairs called “Breakneck Steps,” leading from Mountain Hill to Little Champlain street. Under a grating at the foot of the steps, they discovered the vaults of the old Recollet Church, with the remains of the Father of New France enclosed. ----- [7] The Senecas were one of the Five Nations, composing the redoubtable Iroquois Confederacy. The Tuscaroras joined the League in 1715, and it is subsequently known in history as the “Six Nations.” [8] In this year, Eustache, son of Abraham and Margaret Martin, the first child of European parentage born in Canada, was born at Quebec. * * * * * =Lacerte, Elie=, M.D., Three Rivers, was born on the 15th November, 1821, at Yamachiche, county of St. Maurice, district of Three Rivers, province of Quebec. He is a son of Pierre Lacerte, farmer, of the same place, who was born 11th September, 1792, and died 29th April, 1885, in the suburb of Three Rivers. His grandfather emigrated from the city of Angers, France, in 1671. In 1812 this gentleman enlisted as lieutenant in the Canadian militia, under the late Lieut.-Colonel C. B. A. Gugy, and served up to 1815. On his return he married Louise Blais, of Yamachiche. After a classical course at Nicolet College, Elie Lacerte, the subject of our sketch, began the study of medicine at Three Rivers, and in 1843 went to continue them at the University of Harvard, Cambridge, Mass., where he graduated doctor of medicine on the 5th of March, 1845. He practised as a physician in Boston for some time, then returning to Yamachiche on the 19th November, 1847, where he continued to practice. On the 26th June, 1853, he was appointed justice of the peace for the district of Three Rivers; and in March, 1857, was appointed as postmaster of his town. In 1864 the Post-Office department entrusted him with the conveyance of mails from Montreal to Three Rivers, and this service he faithfully performed up to 1868, when he was elected member of the House of Commons for the county of St. Maurice. In 1872 he was re-elected by acclamation, and in the following session he presented the address in answer to the speech from the throne, but in 1874 he was defeated on the Pacific Scandal question. In 1875 he was elected to a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec, and he sat in this house until the 2nd of March, 1878, when the De Boucherville cabinet was dismissed by Lieut.-Gov. Le Tellier. He then withdrew from active public life, without, however, becoming indifferent to the success of the Liberal-Conservative party to which he always belonged. On the 13th October, 1886, he accepted the agency of the lands and forests of the Crown, in the district of St. Maurice, and that position he still holds. Some years ago Dr. Lacerte commenced a mercantile business, and succeeded very well, but growing tired of this kind of life, in 1884 he handed the business over to one of his sons, who has successfully conducted it ever since. In religion the doctor is a Roman Catholic. He married, 1848, Louise Lamy, and by her has had eleven children, six sons and five daughters. Four sons are still living, and the eldest, Arthur, succeeded his father in 1868 as postmaster. * * * * * =Kerr, William Warren Hastings=, Q.C., Montreal, was born at Three Rivers, in November, 1826. He was the son of James Hastings Kerr, a respected land agent of Quebec. His grandfather, a distinguished English barrister, settled at Quebec in 1797, and was appointed by Imperial commission as judge of the Vice Admiralty Court at Quebec, on the 19th August, 1797; appointed judge of the King’s Bench, in 1807; called to the Executive Council in 1812; to the Legislative Council in 1821, and later on was speaker of the Legislative Council. Mr. Kerr received his early education at Lundy’s College, Quebec, and ultimately he proceeded to Queen’s College, Kingston, and at both institutions his love of legal studies was made conspicuous. He completed his legal studies at Quebec, first with Mr. (later on judge) Jean Chabot, and lastly with Mr. (now Sir) Andrew Stuart, chief justice, S.C. On the 1st May, 1854, he entered into partnership at Quebec with J. M. Le Moine, under the style of Kerr & Le Moine. In May, 1858, this partnership having been dissolved, he entered into partnership with Archibald Campbell, an old friend and fellow student. After practising with success for a few years at Quebec, under the well remembered style of Campbell & Kerr, he sought in Montreal a wider field for his splendid talents. The silk gown of a Queen’s counsel was conferred upon him in 1873, and McGill University granted him the degree of D.C.L. in the same year. He was dean of the Faculty of Law in McGill University and professor of International Law. He was elected _bâtonnier_ of the bar in 1878. In politics, Mr. Kerr was always of a markedly independent turn of mind, and it is generally conceded that if he had taken a more decided position in the political world he would have been elevated to the bench, which he would have ornamented. Twice he unsuccessfully contested parliamentary seats, once running against Sir John Rose in Huntingdon, in the first parliament; and secondly against the late H. A. Nelson for the Quebec legislature. Mr. Kerr’s position at the Montreal bar was one of the very foremost. In every branch of law, civil, criminal, international and constitutional, his opinion was generally regarded as final. Among the prominent trials in which he has figured may be noted the case of the St. Albans’ raiders and the Consolidated Bank; in the latter he defended the directors and secured their final acquittal. His contention as to the status of lieutenant-governors was accepted as final in the famous Letellier case. The news of his death on 12th February, 1888, was received with the deepest regret by his _confrères_ at the bar, and the courts were adjourned out of respect to his memory, in order that the members of the bar might attend his funeral in a body. Hon. Mr. Justice Davidson, at the opening of the Superior Court, in speaking of the death of Mr. Kerr, said: “During the years that I led in the Crown business of this district, there were few great cases in which he was not retained. As a consequence, I had many opportunities of being impressed with his deep knowledge of the principles and intricacies of criminal jurisprudence, his fertility of resource and his subtle powers as a cross examiner. On the civil side of the courts he also occupied a notable position. It is not often that the same mind achieves so large a mastery over two so dissimilar systems of laws. During my earlier practice I often turned to him for counsel, and it was given with a kindliness and sympathy which I have never forgotten. In later years our relations went much beyond those of an ordinary professional intimacy. Such a connection cannot end forever without personal sorrow, compelling the utterance of this more than formal eulogium to his attainments and character. And not only is the Queen’s counsel dead, a husband and father of rarely sweet and affectionate qualities is also to be buried out of our sight.” He was married to a daughter of the Rev. Mr. Arnold, by whom he had two children. * * * * * =Sutherland, Hugh McKay=, Winnipeg, ex-M.P. for Selkirk, Manitoba, President of the Winnipeg and Hudson Bay Railway Company, is the descendant of an old Sutherlandshire (Scotland) family, and was born in New London, P.E.I., on 22nd February, 1843. His parents removed with their family to Oxford county, Ont., where the subject of this sketch was educated. Mr. Sutherland was engaged in lumbering and contracting for a considerable period, but, though leading an active life, he found time to take part in politics, becoming a man of considerable prominence among the members of the Liberal party with which he was identified. In 1874 he was made superintendent of Public Works in the Northwest Territories for the Dominion government, a position for which his knowledge and executive ability well fitted him. During his absence he was nominated for the Provincial legislature of Ontario by the Liberals of East Simcoe in the general election of 1875. Though unable to attend to the elections he made a good run, but was not successful. In 1879 he settled permanently in Winnipeg, after having made it his headquarters during the four or five years he was in the service of the Dominion government, and has ever since been identified with the progress of Manitoba and the development of some of its most important resources. In 1882 he contested Selkirk in the Liberal interest, and was returned for that constituency to the House of Commons at Ottawa by a majority of about 450. In the general election of February, 1887, he was nominated to oppose W. B. Scarth for the city of Winnipeg, but was defeated by the narrow majority of eight. He was the principal promoter of the Hudson Bay Railway scheme, an enterprise which is on a par with the Suez Canal or the Canadian Pacific Railway in its possibilities of influence upon the trade of the world; and was chiefly instrumental in procuring a charter from the Dominion parliament, in 1880, incorporating the Winnipeg and Hudson Bay Railway Company, of which he has ever since been president. Through countless difficulties he has guided this, his greatest enterprise, and has succeeded in building already about forty miles of the road. Notwithstanding the apathy of the mass of Canadians and the active opposition of many great interests, Mr. Sutherland still has faith in the scheme, and feels satisfied it will attract capitalists. He hopes soon to have arrangements completed for continuing the line on to Hudson Bay, and the placing on the route to Britain of a fleet of steamers specially built for the trade. This done, the result must be the revolutionizing of the trade, not only of Manitoba, but of the whole Canadian and American North-West. In energy, tact and organizing ability Mr. Sutherland is preeminently the man to have charge of a gigantic undertaking of this kind. He has been twice married; first, on the 10th February, 1864, to Mary, daughter of Alex. Dickie, of Brant. This lady having died on 11th October, 1875, he married his second wife, Mary, only daughter of Hon. T. Banks, of Baltimore, U.S., on the 10th December, 1878. * * * * * =Otter, Lieut.-Colonel Wm. Dillon=, Toronto, was born near Clinton, Ontario, on the 3rd of December, 1843, and is of English descent. His parents were Alfred William Otter and Anna Dela Hooke. He received his education at the Grammar School, Goderich, and at the Model School and the Upper Canada College in Toronto. He joined the Victoria Rifles, Toronto (now F Company Queen’s Own), in October, 1861, and was promoted to a lieutenancy in the Queen’s Own Rifles in December, 1864. He served in that rank on the Niagara frontier during the winter of 1864-5, in the 2nd Administrative battalion. Appointed adjutant of the Queen’s Own in August, 1865, and was present throughout the Fenian raid of 1866, including the action at Limeridge. Promoted major in June, 1869, and went to England as second in command of the Wimbledon team in June,