too slowly after he had set out overland towards the Seneca villages,
he gave the enemy time to place themselves out of his reach. So he
burned their villages and destroyed large areas of growing corn. After
more than a week had been spent in laying waste the land, Denonville
and his expedition retired slowly to Cataraqui. Leaving part of his
force there, the governor went westward to Niagara, where he rebuilt
in more substantial fashion La Salle's old fort at that point and
placed it in charge of a garrison. The _coureurs-de-bois_ then
continued on their way to Michilimackinac while Denonville returned to
Montreal.

The expedition of 1687 had not been a fiasco like that of 1685,
but neither was it in any real way a success. It angered the whole
Iroquois confederacy without, having sufficiently impressed the
Indians with the punitive power of the French. Denonville had stirred
up the nest without destroying the hornets. It was all too soon the
Indians' turn to show what they could do as ravagers of unprotected
villages; within a year after the French expedition had returned, the
Iroquois bands were raiding the territory of the French to the very
outskirts of Montreal itself. The route to the west was barred; the
fort at Niagara had to be abandoned; Cataraqui was cut off from succor
and ultimately had to be destroyed by its garrison; not a single
canoe-load of furs came down from the lakes during the entire summer.
The merchants were facing ruin, and the whole colony was beginning to
tremble for its very existence. The seven years since Frontenac left
the land had indeed been a lurid interval.

It was at this juncture that tidings of the colony's dire distress
were hurried to the King, and the Grand Monarch moved with rare good
sense. He promptly sent for that grim old veteran whom he had recalled