They were joined by one of the young men who had failed in his oath and penitently sought to redeem himself. Thus the seventeen was now complete.
As men, who might never see their friends again, they bade a general adieu to Ville Marie, and again embarked on the fateful journey whence no one returned to tell the tale. Though bold of heart, many of them were not expert at handling their canoes, so that they were delayed eight days at a rapid (Ste. Anne's) at the end of the Island of Montreal. But their indomitable courage surpassed their inexperience, and they reached, on May 1st, the end of the tumultuous rapids of the Long Leap, or the "Long Sault," at the foot of the Chaudières Fall, on the Ottawa River, at a distance of about eight or ten leagues above Montreal.
There Dollard found a dilapidated war camp abandoned by the Iroquois, the previous autumn. It was not flanked, but defended only by a wretched palisading. It was dangerously overlooked too by a neighbouring wooden slope. Within this feeble fortress, for want of better protection, he cantoned his men and there awaited the canoes of the enemy who must come down the Sault in single file on their return from the chase.
Soon, to their surprise, a body of forty Hurons and four Algonquins came with credentials from the governor of Montreal, requesting Dollard to admit them to a share in their glorious enterprise. These were led by the chief, Anontaha, the Huron, and Mitiwemeg, the Algonquin. Anontaha had descended from Quebec with his Hurons, the relics of a once powerful nation, to waylay Iroquois returning from hunting, and at Three Rivers he had met Mitiwemeg with his Algonquins on a like quest. Having challenged each other's valour, they determined to push to Montreal, where likely there would be an opportunity with the Iroquois to test each other's courage in the fight. Arrived at Montreal the French, "whose fault, it is," says Dollier de Casson, "to talk too much," told them of the whereabouts of Dollard's expedition. Amazed at the daring of so slight a force, and jealous of having been forestalled in the work of falling upon the Iroquois, they sought permission to join them; there the vaunting chiefs could show their valour. Accordingly they arrived with de Maisonneuve's letter which warned Dollard not to put his trust in their bravery, but to act as if he had his Frenchmen alone to help him.