"I dreamed of it last night," Champlain said, "dreamed that I would win it in peace and lose it in war, that I would feel, when I saw that old gray rock against the sky, that I had come home. In my dream someone told me that I would fail in most of my dreams for it and that I would die there, but they told me too that there would be gardens there are high church towers and flags with the lilies of France and that the French tongue would still be heard in its narrow, twisting streets for hundreds of years."
Thus spoke France's royal cartographer and geographer, the Sieur Samuel de Champlain, to his companion and interpreter, twelve-year-old Tom Lee, as they began their voyage to Canada in 1604. Together the two traveled along the east coast of North America, mapping vast territories for their King, establishing friendly relations and trade with the Hurons and Algonquins, subduing the warring Iroquois and opening the way for the conversion of the Indians. Champlain's ambition to find a Northwest Passage to China was never realized but his dream of founding a city on the great rock at Quebec came true in every respect.
The sixth book in Mrs. Kent's "He Went With..." series is a vivid and authentic biography of a great man whose achievements helped to write the first exciting chapters of American history, and whose 350th anniversary of the discovery of Lake Champlain is being celebrated now in a year-long Festival.
From the dust jacket
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