,
curved upwards at the forward end and bound together by cross pieces.
The sides were bordered with strips of wood, which served as brackets
to which was fastened the strap that bound the baggage upon the
sledge. The load was dragged by a rope or strap of leather passing
round the breast of the Indian, and attached to the end of the sledge.
The sledge was so narrow that it could be drawn easily without
impediment wherever an Indian could thread his way over the snow
through the pathless forests.

The rest of the winter and early spring Champlain spent alone, or in
company with Father Joseph Le Caron (one of the Recollet
missionaries), visiting the Algonkin and Huron tribes in the region
east of Lake Huron. He has left this description of the modern country
of Simcoe, the home, three hundred years ago, of the long-vanished
Hurons[30]; and gives us the following particulars of their home
life. The Huron country was a pleasant land, most of it cleared of
forest. It contained eighteen villages, six of which were enclosed and
fortified by palisades of wood in triple rows, bound together, on the
top of which were galleries provided with stores of stones, and
birch-bark buckets of water; the stones to throw at an enemy, and the
water to extinguish any fire which might be put to the palisades.
These eighteen villages contained about two thousand warriors, and
about thirty thousand people in all. The houses were in the shape of
tunnels, and were thatched with the bark of trees. Each lodge or house
would be about 120 feet long, more or less, and 36 feet wide, with a
10-foot passage-way through the middle from one end to the other. On
either side of the tunnel were placed benches 4 feet high, on which
the people slept in summer in order to avoid the annoyance of the
fleas which swarmed in these habitations. In winter time they slept on
the ground on mats near the fire. In the summer the cabins were filled
with stocks of wood to dry and be ready for burning in winter. At the
end of each of these long houses was a space in which the Indian corn
was preserved in great casks made of the bark of trees. Inside the
long houses pieces of wood were suspended from the roof, on to which
were fastened the clothes, provisions, and other things of the
inmates, to keep them from the attacks of the mice which swarmed in
these villages. Each hut might be inhabited by twenty-four families,
who would maintain twelve fires. The smoke, having no pro