visit to the settlement of Stadacona, on October 13, ten
days after his return. The gentlemen of the expedition,
together with fifty sailors, all well armed and appointed,
accompanied the leader. The meeting between the Indians
and their white visitors was similar to those already
described. Indian harangues and wild dancing and shouting
were the order of the day, while Cartier, as usual,
distributed knives and trinkets. The French were taken
into the Indian lodges and shown the stores of food laid
up against the coming winter. Other objects, too, of a
new and peculiar interest were displayed: there were the
'scalp locks' of five men--'the skin of five men's heads,'
says Cartier,--which were spread out on a board like
parchments. The Indians explained that these had been
taken from the heads of five of their deadly enemies,
the Toudamani, a fierce people living to the south, with
whom the natives of Stadacona were perpetually at war.

A gruesome story was also told of a great massacre of a
war party of Donnacona's people who had been on their
way down to the Gaspe country. The party, so the story
ran, had encamped upon an island near the Saguenay. They
numbered in all two hundred people, women and children
being also among the warriors, and were gathered within
the shelter of a rude stockade. In the dead of night
their enemies broke upon the sleeping Indians in wild
assault; they fired the stockade, and those who did not
perish in the flames fell beneath the tomahawk. Five only
escaped to bring the story to Stadacona. The truth of
the story was proved, long after the writing of Cartier's