them. They carried to a preposterous excess the Indian notion, that
insanity is endowed with a mysterious and superhuman power. Their
country was full of pretended maniacs, who, to propitiate their guardian
spirits, or _okies_, and acquire the mystic virtue which pertained to
madness, raved stark naked through the villages, scattering the brands of
the lodge-fires, and upsetting everything in their way.

[ 1 Introduction.--The river Niagara was at this time, 1640, well known
to the Jesuits, though none of them had visited it. Lalemant speaks of
it as the "famous river of this nation" (the Neutrals). The following
translation, from his Relation of 1641, shows that both Lake Ontario and
Lake Erie had already taken their present names.

"This river" (the Niagara) "is the same by which our great lake of the
Hurons, or Fresh Sea, discharges itself, in the first place, into Lake
Erie (le lac d'Erie), or the Lake of the Cat Nation. Then it enters the
territories of the Neutral Nation, and takes the name of Onguiaahra
(Niagara), until it discharges itself into Ontario, or the Lake of
St. Louis; whence at last issues the river which passes before Quebec,
and is called the St. Lawrence." He makes no allusion to the cataract,
which is first mentioned as follows by Ragueneau, in the Relation of 1648.

"Nearly south of this same Neutral Nation there is a great lake, about
two hundred leagues in circuit, named Erie (Erie), which is formed by the
discharge of the Fresh Sea, and which precipitates itself by a cataract
of frightful height into a third lake, named Ontario, which we call Lake
St. Louis."--Relation des Hurons, 1648, 46. ]

The two priests left Sainte Marie on the second of November, found a
Huron guide at St. Joseph, and, after a dreary march of five days through