Champlain ascended the Saguenay River for sixty miles as far as the rapids of Chicoutima.

The Amerindians whom he met here told him of Lake St.John, lying at a short distance to the west, and that beyond this lake and the many streams which entered it there lay a region of uplands strewn with other lakes and pools; and farther away still began the sloping of the land to the north till the traveller sighted a great arm of the salt sea, and found himself amongst tribes (probably the Eskimo) who ate raw flesh, and to the Indians appeared absolute savages.[4] This was probably the first allusion, recorded by a European, to the existence of Hudson's Bay, that huge inlet of the sea, which is one of the leading features in the geography of British North America.
[Footnote 4: The real name for this remarkable people, the Eskimo, is, in Alaska and Arctic North America, _Innuit_, and in Labrador and Greenland, _Karalit_.

Eskimo (in French, _Esquimaux_) is said to be a corruption of the Montagnais-Indian word, Eskimantsik, meaning "eaters of raw flesh".] The Montagnais Indians round about Tadoussac received Champlain with great protestations of friendship, and at the headquarters of their principal chief or "Sagamore" celebrated this new friendship and alliance with a feast in a very large hut.

The banquet, as usual, was preceded by a long address from the Sagamore in answer to the description of France, given by one of the Indian interpreters.

The address was accompanied by the solemn smoking of tobacco, and at every pause in this grave oration the natives present shouted with one voice: "Ho! ho! ho!" The repast consisted of elk's meat (which struck the Frenchmen as being like beef), also the flesh of bear, seal, beaver, and wild fowl.