Twice ToldChamplain, Les Voyages (1613): the chaousarou of Lake Champlain
- Language
- French
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 17 October 2026
Champlain’s own account, written after the 1609 journey up the river and into the lake that now bears his name. The sentence before this page’s first word is on p. 224 (“Entre autres y en a vn, appelé des sauuages du” in the scan’s text layer, which we did not check against that page’s image); the fish is named at the top of p. 225. The next page (p. 226) returns to the route, the mountains and the Iroquois. Long s is printed as s here, and the printer’s tildes over a vowel are written out in square brackets.
pays Chaousarou, qui est de plusieurs lo[n]gueurs: mais les plus grands co[n]tiennent, à ce que m’ont dict ces peuples, 8. à 10. pieds. J’en ay veu qui en contenoyent 5. qui estoient de la grosseur de la cuisse, & auoient la teste grosse comme les deux points [sic: poings], auec vn bec de deux pieds & demy de long, & à double rang de dents fort agues & dangereuses. Il a toute la forme du corps tirant au brochet, mais il est armé d’escailles si fortes qu’vn coup de poignard ne les sçauroit percer, & de couleur de gris argenté. Il a aussi l’extremité du bec comme vn cochon. Ce poisson fait la guerre à tous les autres qui sont dans ces lacs, & riuieres: & a vne industrie merueilleuse, à ce que m’ont asseuré ces peuples, qui est, quand il veut prendre quelques oyseaux, il va ded[a]s des ioncs ou roseaux, qui sont sur les riues du lac en plusieurs endroits, & met le bec hors l’eau sans se bouger: de façon que lors que les oiseaux viennent se reposer sur le bec, pensans que ce soit vn tronc de bois, il est si subtil, que serrant le bec qu’il tient entr’ouuert, il les tire par les pieds soubs l’eau. Les sauuages m’en donnerent vne teste, dont ils font grand estat, disans que lors qu’ils ont mal à la teste, ils se seignent auec les dents de ce poisson à l’endroit de la douleur qui se passe soudain.
Translation
[…] called Chaousarou by the natives of the country, comes in several lengths. The largest, these people told me, are 8 to 10 feet long. I have seen some of 5 feet, as thick as a thigh, with a head as big as two fists, a snout two and a half feet long, and a double row of very sharp, dangerous teeth. The body is shaped much like a pike’s, but it is armoured in scales so strong that a dagger thrust could not pierce them, and it is silvery grey. The tip of the snout is like a pig’s. This fish makes war on all the other fish in these lakes and rivers, and it has a marvellous trick, as these people assured me. When it wants to catch birds, it goes into the rushes or reeds growing along the lake shores in many places and puts its snout out of the water without moving. When the birds come to rest on the snout, thinking it is a stump of wood, it is so cunning that it closes the snout, which it keeps half open, and pulls them under the water by the feet. The natives gave me a head of one, which they value highly. They say that when they have a headache they bleed themselves at the spot of the pain with the teeth of this fish, and the pain goes away at once.
Notes
- The first word, “pays”, finishes the phrase “du pays” (“of the country”); the translation opens with a bracket because the fish’s introduction (“Among the many fish in the lake, there is one …”) sits on the previous page.
- “Pieds” are French feet, longer than the English foot (about 32.5 cm against 30.5 cm), and the figures are Champlain’s estimates; the 8 to 10 feet are explicitly what the natives told him, and the 5 feet are what he says he saw himself.
- The page has no serpent, no barrel and no horse. It describes a long-snouted, armoured fish with a pike’s body and two rows of teeth. Biggar’s English edition (The Works of Samuel de Champlain, vol. 2, Toronto, 1925, pp. 91 to 92) prints “Chaousarou” with the footnote “Probably the garfish.”
- The scan’s text layer prints the word as “Chaouftiroii” because of the long s and the italic; the page image reads “Chaousarou”. The same copy shows “deux points” for “deux poings” (fists); Biggar prints a correction to “poings” in a footnote, and the English reads “my two fists”.
- The text layer’s reading of “lôgueurs” and “côtiennent” has a tilde over the o (longueurs, contiennent), and “dedãs” has one over the a (dedans).