mutual jealousies, and settling knotty questions of rank and precedence.
During this time every means, as he declares, was used to prevent him from
proceeding, and among other devices a rumor was set on foot that a Dutch
fleet, having just captured Boston, was on its way to attack Quebec.
[Footnote: _Lettre de Frontenac a Colbert_, 13 _Nov_. 1673, MS. This
rumor, it appears, originated with the Jesuit Dablon.--_Journal du Voyage
du Comte de Frontenac au Lac Ontario_. MS. The Jesuits were greatly
opposed to the establishment of forts and trading posts in the upper
country, for reasons that will appear hereafter.]

Having sent men, canoes, and baggage, by land, to La Salle's old
settlement of La Chine, Frontenac himself followed on the twenty-eighth of
June. He now had with him about four hundred men, including Indians from
the missions, and a hundred and twenty canoes, besides two large
flatboats, which he caused to be painted in red and blue, with strange
devices, intended to dazzle the Iroquois by a display of unwonted
splendor. Now their hard task began. Shouldering canoes through the
forest, dragging the flatboats along the shore, working like beavers,
sometimes in water to the knees, sometimes to the armpits, their feet cut
by the sharp stones, and they themselves well nigh swept down by the
furious current, they fought their way upward against the chain of mighty
rapids that break the navigation of the St. Lawrence. The Indians were of
the greatest service. Frontenac, like La Salle, showed from the first a
special faculty of managing them; for his keen, incisive spirit was
exactly to their liking, and they worked for him as they would have worked
for no man else. As they approached the Long Saut, rain fell in torrents,
and the Governor, without his cloak, and drenched to the skin, directed in
person the amphibious toil of his followers. Once, it is said, he lay
awake all night, in his anxiety lest the biscuit should be wet, which
would have ruined the expedition. No such mischance took place, and at