six pages in length, and, while it is not
signed, we may justly assume that Rocoles himself, and none other,
wrote it. It begins,--

"One of my friends having lately placed in my hands a few letters
written in the years 1644 and 1645, which Sieur Gendron, native of
Voue in Beausse, had sent to him from that Country [of the Hurons],
where he was at that time; I have had the curiosity to transcribe
from them, word for word, what follows; for a better knowledge and
acquaintance of those lands, newly discovered. And I have done so
the more willingly because this person is worthy of credence, and
he wrote these letters to men of merit, who had travelled much."

In the letters thus transcribed, "word for word," Sieur Gendron gives
the location of the Huron Country, where he writes,--

"I now am," "as between the 44th and 45th degrees of Latitude; and
as to Longitude, it is half an hour more to the west than Quebec."

From his descriptions of the Lake Region, from his location of other
Indian tribes, and from the context, Sieur Gendron was very near the
southern end of Georgian Bay, when he wrote those letters. That he was
in the same Indian Village, as was the House, or Headquarters, of the
Mission to the Hurons (which was located at that point), is deducable
even more strongly, from the fact, that Father Ragueneau, in his report
to his Superior, in 1648, uses, word for word, over more than a score
of printed lines, in locating the adjoining Indian tribes, the language
of Sieur Gendron, written at least three, possibly four, years before,
and published by Rocoles in 1660.

That he did so, not plagiarizing, but with the knowledge and consent,
and not improbably (in those parts of his letter which dealt with
physical conditions) with the assistance, of Docteur Gendron, must be
admitted by those who know from history of the splendid abilities, the
exalted piety, and the noble character of Father Paul Ragueneau, S.J.,
who, after his labors amongst the Hurons were ended, became the
Superior of his Order at Quebec--that is, in Canada.

A little further on, Docteur Gendron writes,--

"Towards the south, and a little towards the west, is the Neuter
Nation, whose villages, which are now on the frontier, are only
about thirty leagues distant from the Hurons. It is forty or fifty
leagues in extent" [that is from west to east, for it extended from
the Detroit River to so