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us,) and am confident that the Iroquese will hearken to thy reasons sooner than any one's. Thou didst often advise them at their Councils, which were held then at the Fort of Katarockoni, where thou hast caused a great cabin to be built. Had I been at my village when thou cam'st through it, I would have done all that I could to have kept thee instead of the Black Coat, (so they call the Jesuits,) which was there.' When the poor Captain had done speaking, I solemnly promised him to use my utmost interest with the Iroquese for the releasement of his friends.

"After we had rowed above a hundred and forty leagues upon the Lake Erie, by reason of the many windings of the bays and creeks which we were forced to coast, we passed by the Great Fall of Niagara, and spent half a day in considering the wonders of that prodigious cascade."

"I could not conceive how it came to pass that four great lakes, the least of which is 400 leagues in compass, should empty themselves one into another, and then all centre and discharge themselves at this Great Fall, and yet not drown good part of America."

Whereupon Hennepin, after modestly wishing that somebody had been with him "who could have described the wonders of this prodigious frightful fall so as to give the reader a just and natural idea of it," proceeds to submit "the following Draught such as it is," but which we do not choose to transcribe. On his route to Fort Frontenac, he claims to have visited the Iroquois, and obtained the "releasement" of the twelve prisoners whom they had taken, and notices the flight of pigeons over their heads in clouds as "a thing worthy of admiration. The birds that were flying at the head of the others, keep often back to ease and

4) Fort Frontenac, now Kingston, at the foot of Lake Ontario.

help those among them that are tired; which may be a lesson to men to help one another in time of need."

There is a map attached to Hennepin's work which shows how little was known of the interior of this continent in 1698. "Lake Erie or of the Cat," is represented as three times as large as Lake Ontario, and equal to Superior. It is wider at the western extremity than elsewhere, extending four degrees of latitude from the straits on the northwest nearly south to the line of the 36th degree, or the latitude of Nashville. One degree below the southwest angle of the lake, the "Hohio," as it is called near the mouth, or the "Ouye," as elsewhere styled, is laid down as flowing between "Apalachin Hills," which range east and west from Virginia towards the Mississippi. A lake nearly as large as Ontario is placed on the south side of these hills, apparently the supposed source of the Savannah River. The Mischasipi, or Mississippi, is laid down in reasonable proportion, the foreshortening of the country east of it being the most ludicrous feature of the map. It is the same, as if the Ohio was sixty miles south of Sandusky Bay, a mountain chain intervening, and then the whole country as far south as Alabama ignored, sunk by a geographical earthquake. The direction of the north shore of Lake Erie is not inaccurate, for it was twice coasted by Hennepin, and the relation between the Niagara and St. Clair rivers is about as we now find it; but instead of narrowing the lake west of the mouth of Cuyahoga river, it sheers off to the south, making a broad angle with the north and south line of the western coast, which is represented as 240 miles long; and thus full onethird of what is now the State of Ohio is swallowed up by an imaginary sea, or an imaginary extension of an actual sea. Sandusky Bay and River, as well as the Maumee River,

are drawn at an accurate angle to the southern shore, and rightly placed as to each other, yet their channels run from east to west, as indeed might be expected when an area as large as Lake Huron is dropped so unceremoniously at the entrance of the strait of St. Clair. Between these streams is found the only reference to an Indian tribe south of Lake Erie, and that is the "Erieckronois," probably a detachment of the unfortunate Eries, availing themselves of the protection of the adjoining Miami and Illinois tribes. As Hennepin's first publication was in 1683, it is probable that this map includes the observations and traditions made and collected by him in 1679-'81, and this record of the Eries twenty-five years after the disastrous campaign of 1655, is an additional proof, in the first instance, that they were not exterminated by their enemies; and secondly, that the power of the Iroquois had been previously checked on the Miami frontier.

Father Hennepin's description of the "pretty large island towards the southwest," is doubtless a modified form of his previous statement that the lake "divides itself at a certain. place into two channels because of a great island enclosed betwixt them." In both cases, (the first is from his general description of Lake Erie, and the other from his narration of the Griffin's cruise,) he probably refers to Point Pelee Island, which, in connection with Kelley's Island, would naturally arrest the notice of the explorer. Cape St. Francis is now called Long Point, and the two other capes doubled in the westward and coastwise progress of La Salle's party, must have been Point aux Pines or Landguard Point, and Point Pelee. La Hontan, in his later map, while far more accurate than Hennepin in his outline of the southern coast of Lake Erie, interrupts his northern shore, about midway

from Niagara to St. Clair, by a projection of a cape or peninsula two-thirds across the lake. Hennepin places and delineates Long Point with reasonable accuracy.

We have mentioned La Hontan, whom we have had occasion to cite elsewhere. His letters include the period of 1683-'93, and are racy productions. He also explored Lake Erie. Not to be outdone by his gray-coated predecessor, he describes Niagara as "seven or eight hundred foot high and half a league broad." After entering Lake Erie, his party coasted along the north coast, "being favored by the calms," for it was August, 1687. "Upon the brink of this lake (he says) we frequently saw flocks of fifty or sixty Turkeys, which run incredibly fast upon the sands, and the savages of our company kill'd great numbers of 'em, which they gave to us in exchange for the fish that we catched. The 25th we arrived at a long point of land which shoots out 14 or 15 leagues into the Lake, and the heat being excessive we chose to transport our boats and baggage two hundred paces over land, rather than coast about for thirty-five leagues." On the 6th of September, La Hontan entered the Straits of St. Clair, and pursued his western route, whither we will not follow him.

CHAPTER V.

THE FRENCH ESTABLISH FORT SANDUSKY-THE ENGLISH EX PLORE THE OHIO VALLEY.

We have given a synopsis of French discovery in the west. These explorations were promptly followed by settlements. In 1701, soon after the peace between the Iroquois and the French in Canada, the latter effected a settlement at Detroit. The party that first took possession of that important position were De la Motte Cadillac, with a Jesuit missionary and one hundred Frenchmen. The fort, which, by its early establishment, made Michigan the oldest of the inland States, except perhaps Illinois, soon became the centre of a valuable trade with the Indians, and the Hurons returned to its vicinity from their fifty years' exile, while above, in Upper Canada, was a colony of Ottawas. Thence, as we have shown, these tribes, who became inseparable companions, soon extended to the Sandusky Basin, where they were firmly established long before any European exploration of the country south of Lake Erie.

At New Orleans and in Illinois were the principal seats of the French in the valley of the Mississippi. As early as 1729, the settlers in the vicinity of New Orleans amounted to nearly six thousand, although a third of that number were slaves; while on the Mississippi, near the Illinois, there were in 1750, five French villages, containing one hundred and forty families, and three villages of colonized natives, numbering not less than six hundred.