iron arrow-heads, coats, shirts, and other commodities; on the fifth,
they were feasted by the French; and at daybreak of the next morning,
they embarked and vanished like a flight of birds.

[ "Comme une volee d'oiseaux."--Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 190 (Cramoisy).
--The tobacco brought to the French by the Hurons may have been raised by
the adjacent tribe of the Tionnontates, who cultivated it largely for
sale. See Introduction. ]

On the second day, then, the long file of chiefs and warriors mounted the
pathway to the fort,--tall, well-moulded figures, robed in the skins of
the beaver and the bear, each wild visage glowing with paint and
glistening with the oil which the Hurons extracted from the seeds of the
sunflower. The lank black hair of one streamed loose upon his shoulders;
that of another was close shaven, except an upright ridge, which,
bristling like the crest of a dragoon's helmet, crossed the crown from
the forehead to the neck; while that of a third hung, long and flowing
from one side, but on the other was cut short. Sixty chiefs and
principal men, with a crowd of younger warriors, formed their council-
circle in the fort, those of each village grouped together, and all
seated on the ground with a gravity of bearing sufficiently curious to
those who had seen the same men in the domestic circle of their
lodge-fires. Here, too, were the Jesuits, robed in black, anxious and
intent; and here was Champlain, who, as he surveyed the throng,
recognized among the elder warriors not a few of those who, eighteen
years before, had been his companions in arms on his hapless foray
against the Iroquois. [ See "Pioneers of France," 370. ]

Their harangues of compliment being made and answered, and the inevitable
presents given and received, Champlain introduced to the silent conclave