These they hung about their necks as if they had been
some costly chain, singing and dancing meanwhile.
However, in spite of these and other horrors, Champlain had "separated
from his Upper Canadian allies with loud protestations of mutual
friendship", promising to go again into their country and assist them
with continued "fraternal" relations.
From this expedition Champlain learned much regarding the geography of
eastern North America, and he brought back with him to France, to
present to King Henry IV, two scarlet tanagers--one of the commonest
and most beautiful birds of the eastern United States--a girdle of
porcupine quills made from the Canadian porcupine, and the head of a
gar-pike caught in Lake Champlain.[23]
[Footnote 23: Unconsciously, no doubt, he brought away with him to the
King of France one of the most remarkable freshwater fish living on
the North-American continent, for the gar-pike belongs, together with
the sturgeon and its allies, to an ancient type of fish the
representatives of which are found in rock formations as ancient as
those of the Secondary and Early Tertiary periods. Champlain may be
said to have discovered this remarkable gar-pike (_Lepidosteus
osseus_), which is covered with bony scales "so strong that a poniard
could not pierce them". The colour he describes as silver-grey.
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