way upward against the perilous rapids of the St. Lawrence, then scarcely
known to the voyager, threaded the romantic channels of the Thousand
Islands, and issued on Lake Ontario. Thirty days of toil and exposure had
told upon them so severely that not a man of the party, except the
Indians, had escaped the attacks of disease in some form.

Their guides led them directly to the great village of the Senecas, near
the banks of the Genesee, flattering them with the hope that they would
here find other guides, to conduct them to the Ohio; and, in truth, the
Senecas had among them a prisoner of one of the western tribes, who would
have answered their purpose. The chiefs met in council: but La Salle had
not yet mastered the language sufficiently to serve as spokesman; and a
Dutch interpreter, brought by the priests, could not explain himself in
French. The Jesuit Fremin was stationed at the village, and his servant
came to their aid: but, as the two priests thought, wilfully
misinterpreted them; and they also conceived the suspicion, perhaps
uncharitable, that the Jesuits, jealous of their enterprise, had tampered
with the Senecas, to thwart it. Be this as it may, the Indians proved
impracticable, evaded their request for a guide, burned before their eyes
the unfortunate western prisoner, and assured them that if they went to
the Ohio the people of those parts would put them to death. As there were
many among the Senecas who wished to kill them in revenge for the chief
murdered near Montreal, and as these and others were at times in a frenzy
of drunkenness with brandy brought from Albany, the position of the French
was very hazardous. They remained, however, for a month; still clinging to
the hope of obtaining guides. At length, an Indian from a village called
Ganastogue, a kind of Iroquois colony at the head of Lake Ontario, offered
to conduct them thither, assuring them that they would find what they
sought. They left the Seneca town; coasted the south shore of the lake;
passed the mouth of the Niagara, where they heard the distant roar of the