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.
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