Now, as I had only two canoes, I could take with me but four men, among
whom was one named Nicholas de Vignau, the most impudent liar that has been
seen for a long time, as the sequel of this narrative will show. He had
formerly spent the winter with the savages, and I had sent him on
explorations the preceding years. He reported to me, on his return to Paris
in 1612, that he had seen the North Sea; that the river of the Algonquins
came from a lake which emptied into it; and that in seventeen days one
could go from the Falls of St. Louis to this sea and back again; that he
had seen the wreck and _debris_ of an English ship that had been wrecked,
on board of which were eighty men, who had escaped to the shore, and whom
the savages killed because the English endeavored to take from them by
force their Indian corn and other necessaries of life; and that he had seen
the scalps which these savages had flayed off, according to their custom,
which they would show me, and that they would likewise give me a young
English boy whom they had kept for me. This intelligence had greatly
pleased me, for I thought that I had almost found that for which I had for
a long time been searching. Accordingly I enjoined upon him to tell me the
truth, in order that I might inform the King, and warned him that if he
gave utterance to a lie he was putting the rope about his neck, assuring
him on the other hand that, if his narrative were true, he could be certain
of being well rewarded. He again assured me, with stronger oaths than ever;
and in order to play his _role_ better he gave me a description of the
country, which he said he had made as well as he was able. Accordingly the
confidence which I saw in him, his entire frankness as it seemed, the
description which he had prepared, the wreck and _debris_ of the ship, and
the things above mentioned, had an appearance of probability, in connection
with the voyage of the English to Labrador in 1612, where they found a
strait, in which they sailed as far as the 63d degree of latitude and the