I had still some hosts. We remained two days to rest, sing the Te
Deum, high mass, and preach. All our Frenchmen went to confession
and communion, to thank God for having preserved us amid so many
wanderings and perils."

They purchased for a gun, a canoe, large enough to contain them all.
With this they paddled a hundred leagues, until they reached Mackinac.
The blasts of approaching winter were beginning to sweep these cold
regions. Here they spent the winter.

At this point they found, as they expected, an important military and
trading post. Many Indians, even from remote tribes, were continually
coming and going. Father Hennepin engaged very earnestly in preaching
to the French, and in trying to teach the Indians the Gospel of Christ.
They were deeply impressed with the heroism he had exhibited in his
long and perilous journey. They said that the father must have been
protected by the Great Spirit, for had any of the Indians attempted to
go so far they would certainly have been put to death by these distant
tribes.

Early in April, 1681, the father, with a few boatmen, set out on his
long voyage to Fort Frontenac, at the extreme end of Lake Ontario. A
broad belt of thick ice still fringed the shores of these northern
lakes. For thirty miles they dragged their canoes over the ice of Lake
Huron; and then, as they came to thin ice, launched them upon this
fresh water sea. They sailed along the lake a "hundred leagues,"
closely following the shore, landing every night, and living mainly
upon white-fish, which were caught in abundance, in twenty fathoms
water. They passed "The Strait" and Lake St. Clair for "thirty
leagues." In the still waters of Lake St. Clair they killed with an
axe, thirty sturgeons which had come to the shallow waters of the banks
to spawn. Near this place they came upon an Ottowa Indian chief, wan
and woe-stricken, who told him that he had been unsuccessful in
hunting, and his wife and five children had all starved to death.

Emerging from "The Strait," they entered Lake Erie, and paddled along
its shores a hundred and twenty leagues. Carrying their canoes and
effects upon their backs, they passed the great Falls of Niagara, and
again took to the water, coasting along the southern shore of Lake
Ontario. After a voyage of about ninety miles, they reached a large
village of Seneca Indians, on the southern shore of the lake. It was
the middle of May. These Indians had constant int