week. Early in spring, they planted a large cross, attached to it the arms
of France, and took formal possession of the country in the name of Louis
XIV. This done, they resumed their voyage, and, after many troubles,
landed one evening in a state of exhaustion on or near Point Pelee,
towards the western extremity of Lake Erie. A storm rose as they lay
asleep, and swept off a great part of their baggage, which, in their
fatigue, they had left at the edge of the water. Their altar-service was
lost with the rest,--a misfortune which they ascribed to the jealousy and
malice of the Devil. Debarred henceforth from saying mass, they resolved
to return to Montreal and leave the Pottawattamies uninstructed. They
presently entered the strait by which Lake Huron joins Lake Erie; and,
landing near where Detroit now stands, found a large stone, somewhat
suggestive of the human figure, which the Indians had bedaubed with paint,
and which they worshipped as a manito. In view of their late misfortune,
this device of the arch-enemy excited their utmost resentment. "After the
loss of our altar-service," writes Galinee, "and the hunger we had
suffered, there was not a man of us who was not filled with hatred against
this false deity. I devoted one of my axes to breaking him in pieces; and
then, having fastened our canoes side by side, we carried the largest
piece to the middle of the river, and threw it, with all the rest, into
the water, that he might never be heard of again."

This is the first recorded passage of white men through the Strait of
Detroit; though Joliet had, no doubt, passed this way on his return from
the Upper Lakes. [Footnote: The Jesuits and fur-traders, on their way to
the Upper Lakes, had followed the route of the Ottawa, or, more recently,
that of Toronto and the Georgian Bay. Iroquois hostility had long closed
the Niagara portage and Lake Erie against them.] The two missionaries took
this course, with the intention of proceeding to the Saut Sainte Marie,
and there joining the Ottawas, and other tribes of that region, in their