These,
which were originally white or grey in colour, had been previously
dyed a fine scarlet with colouring matter from the root of the
bed-straw (_Galium tinctorum_). The women were loaded with necklaces
of violet or white shell beads, bracelets, ear-rings, and great
strings of beads falling below the waist. Sometimes they would have
plates of leather studded with shell beads and hanging over the back.
[Illustration: SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN; ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER]
In 1616 Champlain returned to France, but visited Quebec in 1617 and
1618. During the years spent at Quebec, which followed his
explorations of 1616, he was greatly impeded in his work of
consolidating Canada as a French colony by the religious strife
between the Catholics and Huguenots, and the narrow-minded greed of
the Chartered company of fur-trading merchants for whom he worked. But
in 1620 he came back to Canada as Lieutenant-Governor (bringing his
wife with him), and after attending to the settlement of a violent
commercial dispute between fur-trading companies he tried to compose
the quarrel between the Iroquois and the Algonkins, and brought about
a truce which lasted till 1627.
In 1628 came the first English attack on Canada. A French fleet was
defeated and captured in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and in the
following year Champlain, having been obliged to surrender Quebec (he
had only sixteen soldiers as a garrison, owing to lack of food),
voyaged to England more or less as a prisoner of state in the summer
of 1629.
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