Note 381 — Chapter III

[It was while crossing one of these portages, “suffering more from the mosquitoes than their burdens,” that Champlain is supposed to have lost his astrolabe; and his Journal shows that his subsequent records of latitude in the journey failed of the general accuracy which characterized his earlier entries. At least an astrolabe, with an inscription of its Paris make, 1603, was dug up on this route in August, 1867. Cf. O. H. Marshall, in Magazine of American History (March, 1879), iii. 179, and Alexander J. Russell’s On Champlain’s Astrolabe, Montreal, 1879; also Slafter’s edition of Champlain’s Voyages, iii. 64-66.—Ed.]