Having to look to his own future, Lahontan joined the Régiment de Bourbon as a cadet; and, in the hope of gaining more rapid promotion, he requested a transfer to the Marine Guard in 1681. It was as a marine lieutenant that Lahontan, at age seventeen, sailed from La Rochelle to Quebec in the troopship
Tempête, arriving in November 1683.
The story of Lahontan's life in North America is well stocked, thanks in great part to his account of it in Nouveaux Voyages ... dans l'Amérique Septentrionale (1703). Lahontan spent his first winter in New France billeted at Beaupré, whiling away the months reading classical authors and hunting with a party of Algonquin youths. He was ordered to Ville-Marie (Montreal) in the summer of 1684 and participated in the disastrous expedition to Fort Frontenac (Kingston) led by Lefèbvre de La Barre. After a winter at Ville-Marie and a posting to the nearby Fort Chambly, Lahontan was assigned to Boucherville, where he remained till the spring of 1687. Reading Anacreon, Homer, Lucian, and Petronius, and hunting with the Algonquin, in whose language he came to acquire some fluency, continued to be his principal winter occupations.
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