the
fall; afterwards entering another lake [Erie] some sixty leagues
long and containing very good water."

In the same volume Champlain records that another savage told him,--

"That the water at the western end of the lake [Ontario] was
perfectly salt; that there was a fall about a league wide, where a
very large mass of water falls into said lake."

It was not the wonders nor the beauty of the Cataract that impressed
itself upon the minds of those savages, and that led them to furnish to
Champlain--and so to the white man's world--the very first knowledge of
the existence of Niagara. No! What most impressed the Cataract upon the
minds of those Aborigines was the fact that at this point, the Falls
themselves, together with the Rapids for a short distance above them,
and for a long distance below them, were an insuperable obstacle to
water--that is, canoe--navigation; that here they were obliged to make
a long "portage." It was the only break in an otherwise uninterrupted
water travel of hundreds of miles; which, going westward, extended from
a point on the St. Lawrence, many miles east of the outlet of Lake
Ontario, clear to the farthest end of Lake Superior; and which, coming
eastward, extended nearly 1,500 miles, from where the City of Duluth
now stands even until it reached the bitter waters of the Atlantic
Ocean in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.

In the same volume, "Des Sauvages," appeared a poem by one "La
Franchise," addressed to Champlain, in which mention is made of the
"Saults Mocosans" or Mocosan Falls, "which shock the eyes of those who
dare to look upon that unparalleled downpour."

Mocosa was the name of that territory vaguely called Virginia, and
which seems to have embraced everything from New York to Florida,
extending indefinitely to the west and northwest. The allusion is
generally considered to refer to Niagara; thus making Niagara's
appearance in Poetry cotemporaneous with its appearance in prose.

In 1609, Lescarbot published his "Histoire de la Nouvelle France,"
wherein he quotes extensively (including the references to Niagara)
from Champlain; the work being reissued in several editions in
subsequent years. And in 1610, Lescarbot, who was a great admirer of
Champlain (he may himself have been "La Franchise"), produced a poem,
wherein he speaks of the "great falls" which the Indians encounter in
going up the St. Lawrence, from below the present site of Montreal,
"jusqu'