c.
Few places possessed a more interesting history than this old
headquarters of the Indian tribes and French voyageurs. Mackinac may
be considered, in some respects, the key of the upper lakes. Here the
tribes from the north to the south could assemble at a very short
notice and decide on questions of trade or war. It was long the
metropolis of a large portion of the Huron {175} and Ottawa nations,
and many a council, fraught with the peace of Canada, was held there in
the olden times. It was on the north side of the straits that Father
Marquette--whose name must ever live in the west--some time in 1671
founded the mission of St. Ignace, where gradually grew up the most
important settlement which the French had to the northwest of Fort
Frontenac or Cataraqui. The French built a chapel and fort, and the
Hurons and Ottawas lived in palisaded villages in the neighbourhood.
The _coureurs de bois_ were always to be seen at a point where they
could be sure to find Indians in large numbers. Contemporary writers
state that the presence of so many unruly elements at this distant
outpost frequently threw the whole settlement into a sad state of
confusion and excitement, which the priests were at times entirely
unable to restrain. Indians, soldiers, and traders became at last so
demoralised, that one of the priests wrote, in his despair, that there
seemed no course open except "deserting the missions and giving them up
to the brandy-sellers as a domain of drunkenness and debauchery."

But it would be a mistake to judge all the _coureurs de bois_ by the
behaviour of a majority, who were made up necessarily from the ruder
elements of the Canadian population. Even the most reckless of their
class had their work to do in the opening up of this continent.
Despising danger in every form, they wandered over rivers and lakes and
through virgin forests, and "blazed" a track, as it were, for the
future pioneer. They were the first to lift the {176} veil of mystery
that hung, until they came, on many a solitary river and forest. The
posts they raised by the side of the western lakes and rivers, were so
many videttes of that army of colonisers who have built up great
commonwealths in that vast country, where the bushranger was the only
European two centuries ago. The most famous amongst their leaders was
the quick-witted Nicholas Perrot--the explorer of the interior of the
continent. Another was Daniel Greysolon Duluth, who becam