Champlain and Brule are two names of surpassing interest in their
relation to Niagara. The first unquestionably heads the long list of
Authors who have ever written about our Waterfall; the other probably
heads the infinitely longer list--comprising many millions--of those
pale-faces who have ever visited our Cataract.
[Illustration: PETER KALM'S VIEW OF NIAGARA--1751.]
That first reference to Niagara in all Literature is found in that of
France, in 1603, when Samuel de Champlain, the subsequent founder of
Quebec, the first Governor-General of New France,--and still the most
picturesque figure in all Canadian history,--narrated, in his now
excessively rare pamphlet, "Des Sauvages" (of which only about
half-a-dozen copies are known to exist), what the Indians on the St.
Lawrence River told him about this waterfall (for he himself never saw
Niagara), in these words:
"Then they come to a lake [Ontario] some eighty leagues long, with
a great many Islands [the Thousand Islands], the water at its
extremity being fresh and the winter mild. At the end of this lake
they pass a fall [Niagara] somewhat high, where there is quite a
little water which falls down. There they carry their canoes
overland for about a quarter of a league, in order to pass the
fall; afterwards entering another lake [Erie] some sixty leagues
long and containing very good water."