n the site of the present Lewiston. They probably
never saw the Falls; their visit being filled with danger, hunger, and
threats of their destruction by the very savages whose souls they were
trying to save. Father L'Allement, their Superior, in his account of
their Mission, in the Jesuit Relation of 1642, speaks merely of "the
village Onguiaahra, of the same name as the river."

Another passage in his letter says,--

"Many of our Frenchmen, who have been here in the Huron Country, in
the past made journeys in this Country of the Neutral Nation, for
the sake of reaping profit and advantage from furs, and other
little wares that one might look for."

And in all probability some of those Frenchmen had reached the Niagara
River, in their trade with the Neutrals, before Father Daillon crossed
its stream.

Niagara was then, as it is now, the geographical center of the eastern
one-third of North America; it was the center of population among the
many and widely distributed Indian Tribes; it was the most accessible,
the most easily reached place, from all directions, in America. Indian
trails led toward it from all points of the compass; it was easily
accessible by water from every quarter--and, by canoe, was the Indians
preferred means of transportation.

It was thus easily reached by the tribes on the east and northeast by
Lake Ontario; by the tribes on the north by Lake Simcoe and the portage
to Toronto; by the tribes in the great west and northwest (covering a
vast territory) by all the upper lakes; by the tribes in the southwest
by the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Alleghany rivers; by the tribes
in the southeast by the Susquehanna River. Even in aboriginal days--by
reason of its central location, its portage, its position as a Center
of Trade, and its "Erie Stones"--Niagara was the best and most widely
known spot on the Continent; even as--for other reasons--it is to-day.

Father Ragueneau, in a letter written from the Huron Country, in
Canada, in 1648, and published in the "Jesuit Relation" of 1649, makes
the second known direct printed reference to the Falls themselves, when
he writes,--

"Lake Erie, which is formed by the waters from the Mer Douce [Lake
Huron], discharges itself into Lake Ontario, over a Cataract of
fearful height,"

which description was, word for word, the same as is found in a letter,
written not later than 1645, from that same Huron Country, by Docteur
Gendro