On the 3d of September, 1607, the colonists, having assembled by agreement at Canseau, embarked for France, and arrived at St. Malo early in October. Champlain hastened to lay before De Monts the results of his explorations, together with his maps and drawings. The zeal of De Monts was rekindled by the recital, notwithstanding the losses he had sustained and the disappointments he had encountered. Specimens of grain, corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats, together with two or three braces of the beautiful brant goose, which had been bred from the shell, were presented to the King as products of New France and as an earnest of its future wealth. Henry IV. was not insensible to the merits of the faithful De Monts, and he granted him a renewal of his monopoly of the fur-trade, but only for a single year. With this limitation of his privilege, stimulated by the futile hope of getting it extended at its expiration, De Monts fitted out two vessels,—one to be commanded by Pont Gravé, and devoted exclusively to the fur-trade, while the other was to be employed in transporting men and material for a settlement or plantation on the River St. Lawrence. Of this expedition Champlain was constituted lieutenant-governor,—an office which he subsequently continued to hold in New France, with little interruption, till his death in 1635.
On the 13th of April, 1608, he left Honfleur, and arrived at Tadoussac on the 3d of June. Here he found Pont Gravé, who had preceded him, in serious trouble. A Basque fur-trader and whale-fisherman, who did not choose to be restrained in his trade, had attacked him, killed one of his men, severely wounded Pont Gravé himself, and taken possession of his armament. The illegal character of this proceeding and its utter disregard of the King’s commission clearly merited immediate and severe punishment. While the Governor was greatly annoyed, he did not, however, allow passion to warp his judgment or overcome the dictates of reason. The punishment, so richly deserved, could not be administered without the sacrifice of all his plans for the present year. With a characteristic prudence he therefore decided, “in order not to make a bad cause out of a just one,” to use his own expression, upon a compromise, by referring the final settlement to the authorities in France, with the assurance, in the mean time, that there should be no further interference by either party with the other.