“La costé de Baston est peuplée, mais il n’y à aucun poste qui veille. Baston mesme est sans palissades à moins qu’on n’en ait mis depuis six mois. Il y a bien du peuple en cette colonie, mais assez difficile à rassembler. Monsieur Perrot connoist cette coste, et le Sieur de Villebon qui est à la Rochelle à present, avec le nommé La Motte,—tous le trois ont souvent esté à Baston et à Manat.... Par la carte suivante, on peut voir comme ce pays se trouve situé,” etc.
The capture of Pemaquid in 1696 revived hopes in the French of making a successful descent upon Boston, and even upon New York.
Several documents in reference to the scheme, and respecting in part Franquelin’s map of Boston, are in the _Mass. Archives; Documents Collected in France_, iv. 467, etc. This map is given in the _Memorial History of Boston_, vol. ii. p. li, from a copy made by Mr. Poore, and in Mr. Parkman’s manuscript collections. In the same place will be found accounts of earlier French maps of Boston (1692-1693), one of them by Franquelin, but both very inexact. The references on this projected inroad of the French are given by Parkman (_Frontenac_, p. 384), Shea (_Charlevoix_, v. 70), and Barry (_Massachusetts_, ii. 89, etc.).
BY THE REV. EDWARD D. NEILL, A.B., ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA.
_Corresponding Member Massachusetts Historical Society; Hon. Vice-President New England Historic Genealogical Society._
PURCHAS in his _Pilgrimage_ quaintly writes, that “the great river Canada hath, like an insatiable merchant, engrossed all these water commodities, so that other streames are in a manner but meere pedlers.”[438]
This river of Canada, the Hochelaga of the natives, now known as the St. Lawrence, is the most wonderful of all the streams of North America which find their way into the Atlantic Ocean. Its extreme headwaters are on the elevated plateau of the continent, near the birthplace of the Mississippi, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and the Red River of the North, which empties into Hudson’s Bay. Expanding into the interior sea, Lake Superior, after rippling and foaming over the rocks at Sault Ste. Marie it divides into Lake Michigan and Lake Huron; and passing through the latter and Lake St. Claire[439] and Lake Erie, with the energy of an infuriated Titan it dashes itself into foam and mist at Niagara. After recovering composure, it becomes Ontario, the “beautiful lake,”[440] and then, hedged in by scenery varied, sublime, and picturesque, and winding through a thousand isles, it becomes the wide and noble river which admits vessels of large burden to the wharves of the cities of Montreal and Quebec; and until lost in the Atlantic, “many islands are before it, offering their good-nature to be mediators between this haughty stream and the angry ocean.”[441] The aborigines, who dwelt in rude lodges near its banks, chiefly belonged to the Huron or Algonquin family; and although there were variations in dialect, they found no difficulty in understanding one another, and in their light canoes they made long journeys, on which they exchanged the copper implements and agate arrow-heads of the far West for the shells and commodities of the sea-shore.[442]