ing and the most abundant of the Colony. Depending on it were La Presentation, La Galette, Suegatzí, L'isle au Galop, and L'isle Picquet in the River St. Lawrence. There were in the Fort, seven small stone guns and eleven four to six pounders.

The most distinguished of the Iroquois families were distributed at La Presentation in three villages: that which adjoined the French fort contained, in 1754, forty-nine bark cabins some of which were from sixty to eighty feet long and accommodated three to four families. The place pleased them on account of the abundance of hunting and fishing. This Mission could no doubt be increased, but cleared land sufficient to allow all the families to plant and to aid them to subsist would be necessary and each Tribe should have a separate location.

The

Bishop of Quebec wishing to witness and assure himself personally of the wonders related to him of the establishment at La Presentation went thither in 1749, accompanied by some Officers, royal interpreters, Priests from other Missions and several other clergymen, and spent ten days examining and causing the Catechumens to be examined. He himself baptized one hundred and thirty-two, and did not cease during his sojourn, blessing Heaven for the progress of Religion among these Infidels.

Scarcely were they baptized when M. Picket determined to give them a form of Government. He established a Council of Twelve Ancients; chose the most influential among the Five Nations; brought them to Mont-Real where at the hands of the Marquis Du Quesne they took the Oath of Allegiance to the King to the great astonishment of the whole Colony where no person dared to hope for such an event.

In the month of June 1751, M. Picquet made a voyage around Lake Ontario with a King's Canoe and one of Bark in which he had five trusty Savages, with the design of attracting some Indian families to the new settlement of La Presentation. There is a memoir, among his papers on the subject, from which it is proposed to give an extract.

He visited Fort Frontenac or Cataracoui, situate twelve leagues west of La Presentation. He found no Indians there though it was formerly the rendezvous of the Five Nations. The bread and

milk, there, were bad; they had not even brandy there to staunch a wound. Arrived at a point of Lake Ontario called Kaoi, he found a runaway there from Virginia. At the Bay

of Quinté he visited the site of the antient Mission which M. Dollieres de Kleus and Abbé D'Urfé, priests of the Saint Sulpice Seminary had established there. The quarter is beautiful but the land is not good. He visited Fort Toronto, seventy leagues from Fort Frontenac, at the West end of Lake Ontario. He found good Bread and good Wine there, and every thing requisite for the trade, whilst they were in want of these at all the other posts. He found Mississagues there who flocked around him; they spoke first of the happiness their young people, the women and children would feel if the King would be as good to them as to the Iroquois for whom he procured Missionaries. They complained that instead of building a church, they had constructed only a canteen for them. M. Picquet did not allow them to finish and answered them that they had been treated according to their fancy; that they had never evinced the least zeal for religion; that their conduct was much opposed to it; that the Iroquois on the contrary had manifested their love for Christianity, but as he had no order to attract them to his Mission, he avoided a more lengthy explanation.

He passed thence to Niagara. He examined the situation of that fort, not having any savages to whom he could speak. It is well located for defence not being commanded from any point. The view extends to a great distance; they have the advantage of the landing of all the canoes and barks which land and are in safety there. But the rain was washing the soil away by degrees, notwithstanding the vast expence which the King incurred to sustain it. M. Picquet was of opinion that the space between the land and the wharf might be filled in so as to support it and make a glacis there. This place was important as a Trading post and as securing possession of the Carrying place, Niagara and Lake Ontario.

From Niagara, Mr. Picquet went to the Carrying place which is six leagues from that Post. He visited on the same day the famous Fall of Niagara by which the four Great Canada lakes discharge

themselves into Lake Ontario. This Cascade is as prodigious by its height and the quantity of water which falls there, as by the variety of its falls which are to the number of six principal ones divided by a small island, leaving three to the North and three to the South. They produce of themselves a singular symmetry and wonderful effect. He measured the height of one of those falls from the south side, and he found it about one hundred and forty feet. The establishment at this Carrying place, the most important in a commercial point of view was the worst stocked. The Indians, who came there in great numbers, were in the best disposition to trade, but not finding what they wanted, they went to Choueguen or Choëguen [Oswego] at the mouth of the river of the same name. M. Picquet counted there as many as fifty canoes. There was notwithstanding at Niagara a Trading House where the Commandant and Trader lodged, but it was too small, and the King's property was not safe there.

M. Picquet negotiated with the Senecas who promised to repair to his Mission and gave him twelve children as hostages, saying to him that their parents had nothing dearer to them and followed him immediately, as well as the Chief of the Little Rapid with all his family. He set out with all those Savages to return to Fort Niagara. M. Chabert de Joncaire would not abandon him. At each place where they encountered camps, cabins and entrepots, they were saluted with musquetry by the Indians who never ceased testifying their consideration for the Missionary. M. Picquet took the lead with the Savages of the hills; Mess" Joncaire and Rigouille following with the recruits. He embarked with thirty-nine Savages in his large canoe and was received on arriving at the fort with the greatest ceremony, even with the discharge of cannon which greatly pleased the Indians. On the morrow he assembled the Senecas, for the first time, in the chapel of the Fort for religious services.

M. Picquet returned along the south coast of Lake Ontario. Alongside of Choëguen, a young Seneca met her Uncle who was coming from his village with his wife and children. This young

1 These are French feet. The falls on the American side are 164 feet high.Burr's Atlas, Introd. p. 31.

girl spoke so well to her Uncle, though she had but little knowledge of Religion that he promised to repair to La Presentation early the following spring, and that he hoped to gain over also seven other cabins of Senecas of which he was chief. Twentyfive leagues from Niagara he visited the River Gascouchagou' where he met a number of Rattlesnakes. The young Indians jumped into the midst of them and killed forty-two without having been bitten by any.

He next visited the Falls of this River. The first which appear in sight in ascending resemble much the great Cascade at Saint Cloud, except that they have not been ornamented and do not seem so high, but they possess natural beauties which render them very curious. The second, a quarter of a mile higher, are less considerable, yet are remarkable. The third, also a quarter of a league higher, has beauties truly admirable by its curtains and falls which form also, as at Niagara, a charming proportion and variety. They may be one hundred and some feet high. In the intervals between the falls, there are a hundred little cascades which present likewise a curious spectacle; and if the altitudes of each chute were joined together, and they made but one as at Niagara, the height would, perhaps, be four hundred feet; but there is four times less water than at the Niagara Fall which will cause the latter to pass, for ever, as a Wonder perhaps unique in the World.

The English to throw disorder into this new levy sent a good deal of brandy. Some savages did, in fact get drunk whom M. Picquet could not bring along. He therefore desired much that Choëguen were destroyed and the English prevented rebuilding it; and in order that we should be absolutely masters of the south side of Lake Ontario, he proposed erecting a Fort near there at the bay of the Cayugas3 which would make a very good harbour and furnish very fine anchorage. No place is better adapted for a Fort.

He examined attentively the Fort of Choëguen, a post the most pernicious to France that the English could erect. It was com

1 The Genesee River. In Belin's Map of Partie Occidentale de la Nouvelle France 1755 (No. 992. W. C. State Lib.) it is described as a "River unknown to Geographers, filled with Rapids and Waterfalls."

2 The highest fall on the river is 105 feet.

3 Sodus bay.

manded almost from all sides and could be very easily approached in time of war. It was a two story very low building; decked like a ship and surmounted on the top by a gallery; the whole was surrounded by a stone wall, flanked only with two bastions at the side towards the nearest hill. Two batteries each of three twelve pounders, would have been more than sufficient to reduce that establishment to ashes. It was prejudicial to us by the facility it afforded the English of communicating with all the tribes of Canada still more than by the trade carried on there as well by the French of the Colony as by the savages: for Choëguen was supplied with merchandize adapted only to the French, at least as much as with what suited to the savages, a circumstance that indicated an illicit trade. Had the Minister's orders been executed, the Choëguen trade at least with the savages of Upper Canada would be almost ruined. But it was necessary to supply Niagara, especially the Portage, rather than Toronto. The difference between the two first of these posts and the last is, that three or four hundred canoes could come loaded with furs to the Portage, and that no canoes could go to Toronto except those which cannot pass before Niagara and to Fort Frontenac, such as the Otaois of the head of the Lake (Fond du Lac) and the Mississagues; so that Toronto could not but diminish the trade of these two antient posts, which would have been sufficient to stop all the savages had the stores been furnished with goods to their liking. There was a wish to imitate the English in the trifles they sold the savages such a silver bracelets etc. The Indians compared & weighed them, as the storekeeper at Niagara stated, and the Choëguen bracelets which were found as heavy, of a purer silver and more elegant, did not cost them two beavers, whilst those at the King's posts wanted to sell them for ten beavers. Thus we were discredited, and this silver ware remained a pure loss in the King's stores. French brandy was preferred to the English, but that did not prevent the Indians going to Choeguen. To destroy the Trade the King's posts ought to have been supplied with the same goods as Choëguen and at the same price. The French ought also have been forbidden to send the domiciliated Indians thither: but that would have been very difficult.

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