or thicket-covered island, the whistling of a stone-headed arrow
proclaimed, perhaps, the presence of these fierce marauders. At Montreal
there was no human life, save during a brief space in early summer,
when the shore swarmed with savages, who had come to the yearly trade
from the great communities of the interior. To-day there were dances,
songs, and feastings; to-morrow all again was solitude, and the Ottawa
was covered with the canoes of the returning warriors.

Along this stream, a main route of traffic, the silence of the wilderness
was broken only by the splash of the passing paddle. To the north of the
river there was indeed a small Algonquin band, called _La Petite Nation_,
together with one or two other feeble communities; but they dwelt far
from the banks, through fear of the ubiquitous Iroquois. It was nearly
three hundred miles, by the windings of the stream, before one reached
that Algonquin tribe, _La Nation de l'Isle_, who occupied the great island
of the Allumettes. Then, after many a day of lonely travel, the voyager
found a savage welcome among the Nipissings, on the lake which bears
their name; and then circling west and south for a hundred and fifty
miles of solitude, he reached for the first time a people speaking a
dialect of the Iroquois tongue. Here all was changed. Populous towns,
rude fortifications, and an extensive, though barbarous tillage,
indicated a people far in advance of the famished wanderers of the
Saguenay, or their less abject kindred of New England. These were the
Hurons, of whom the modern Wyandots are a remnant. Both in themselves
and as a type of their generic stock they demand more than a passing
notice.

[ The usual confusion of Indian tribal names prevails in the case of the
Hurons. The following are their synonymes:--