peared insurmountable in their execution for which every thing failed us.

To supply the want of canoes, we had built, in secret, two Batteaux of a novel and excellent structure to pass the rapids; these batteaux drew but very little water and carried considerable freight, fourteen or fifteen men each, amounting to fifteen to sixteen hundred weight. We had moreover four Algonquin and four Iroquois canoes, which were to compose our little fleet of fifty-three Frenchmen.

But the difficulty was to embark unperceived by the Iroquois who constantly beset us. The batteaux, canoes and all the equipage could not be conveyed without great noise, and yet without secrecy there was nothing to be expected save a general massacre of all of us the moment it would be discovered that we entertained the least thought of withdrawing.

On that account we invited all the Savages in our neighbourhood to a solemn feast at which we employed all our industry, and spared neither the noise of drums nor instruments of music, to deceive them by harmless device. He who presided at this ceremony played his part with so much address and success, that all were desirous to contribute to the publick joy: Every one vied in uttering the most piercing cries, now of war, anon of rejoicing. The Savages, through complaisance, sung and danced after the French fashion and the French in the Indian style. To encourage them the more in this fine play, presents were distributed among those who acted best their parts and who made the greatest noise to drown that caused by about forty of our people outside who were engaged in removing all our equipage. The embarcation being completed, the feast was concluded at a fixed time; the guests retired, and sleep having soon overwhelmed them, we withdrew from our house by a back door and embarked with very little noise, without bidding adieu to the Savages, who were acting cunning parts and were thinking to amuse us to the hour of our massacre with fair appearances and evidences of good will.

Our little Lake on which we silently sailed in the darkness of the night, froze according as we advanced and caused us to fear

being stopt by the ice after having evaded the fires of the Iroquois. God, however, delivered us, and after having advanced all night and all the following day through frightful precipices and waterfalls, we arrived finally in the evening at the great Lake Ontario, twenty leagues from the place of our departure. This first day was the most dangerous, for had the Iroquois observed our departure they would have intercepted us, and had they been ten or twelve it would have been easy for them to have thrown us into disorder, the river being very narrow, and terminating after travelling ten leagues in a frightful precipice where we were obliged to land and carry our baggage and canoes during four hours, through unknown roads covered with a thick forest which could have served the enemy for a Fort, whence at each step he could have struck and fired on us without being perceived. God's protection visibly accompanied us during the remainder of the road, in which we walked through perils which made us shudder after we escaped them, having at night no other bed except the snow after having passed entire days in the water and amid the ice.

Ten days after our departure we found Lake Ontario on which we floated, still frozen at its mouth. We were obliged to break the ice, axe in hand, to make an opening, to enter two days afterwards a rapid where our little fleet had well nigh foundered. For having entered a Great Sault without knowing it, we found ourselves in the midst of breakers which, meeting a quantity of big rocks, threw up mountains of water and cast us on as many precipices as we gave strokes of paddles. Our batteaux which drew scarcely half a foot, were soon filled with water and all our people in such confusion, that their cries mingled with the roar of the torrent presented to us the spectacle of a dreadful wreck. It became imperative, however, to extricate ourselves, the violence of the current dragging us despite ourselves into the large rapids and through passes in which we had never been. Terror redoubled at the sight of one of our canoes being engulfed in a breaker which barred the entire rapid and which, notwithstanding, was the course that all the others must keep. Three Frenchmen were drowned there, a fourth fortu

nately escaped, having held on to the canoe and being saved at the foot of the Sault when at the point of letting go his hold, his strength being exhausted. The 3d of April we landed at Montreal, in the beginning of the night.

*

You noticed above...... how our Fathers and our Frenchmen withdrew from their habitation built on the banks of Lake Ganantaa, near Onnontagué. That happened at night, and without noise and with so much address, that the Iroquois, who cabined at the doors of our house, never perceived the removal of the canoes and batteaux and bagage which were launched, nor the embarcation of fifty-three persons. Sleep in which they were deeply enveloped, after considerable singing and dancing, deprived them of all consciousness; but at length night having given place to day, darkness to light, sleep to awaking, these Barbarians left their cabins, and roving round our well locked house, were astonished at the profound silence of the Frenchmen. They saw no one going out to work; they heard no voice. They thought at first that they were all at prayer, or in council, but the day advancing and these prayers not getting to an end, they knocked at the door. The dogs, which our Frenchmen designedly left behind, answered by barking. The cock's crow which they heard in the morning and the noise of the dogs, made them think that the masters of these animals were not far off; they recovered the patience which they had lost. But at length the sun began to decline and no person answering neither to the voice of men nor to the cries of animals, they scaled the house to see the condition of our people in this terrible silence. Astonishment now gave place to fright and trouble. They open the door; the chiefs enter every where; ascend the garret; descend to the cellar; not a Frenchman makes his appearance dead or alive. They regard one another-terror seizes them; they imagine they have to do with Devils. They saw no batteau, and even if they saw it they could not imagine that our Frenchmen would be so rash as to precipitate themselves into rapids and breakers, among rocks and horrible dangers in which themselves though very expert in passing through Saults and Cascades, often lose their

lives. They persuade themselves either that they walked on the waves, or fled through the air; or as seemed most probable, that they concealed themselves in the woods. They seek for them; nothing appears. They are quasi convinced that they rendered themselves invisible; and as they suddenly departed, so will they pounce as suddenly on their village.