ar
what is now Toronto. Early next morning an altar was laid on the propped
paddles of the canoes and solemn service held. La Salle and his four
canoes went back to Montreal with Jolliet and Pere; Dollier and Galinee
coasted along the shores of Lake Erie westward.

{131} It was October. The forests were leafless, the weather damp, the
lake too stormy for the frail canoes. As game was plentiful, the priests
decided to winter on a creek near Port Dover. Here log houses were
knocked up, and the servants dispersed moose hunting for winter supplies.
Then followed the most beautiful season of the year in the peninsula of
Ontario, Indian summer, dreamy warm days after the first cold, filling
the forest with a shimmer of golden light, the hills with heat haze,
while the air was odorous with smells of nuts and dried leaves and grapes
hanging thick from wild vines. "It was," writes Galinee, "simply an
Earthly Paradise, the most beautiful region that ever I have seen in my
life, with open woods and meadows and rivers and game in plenty." In
this Earthly Paradise the priests passed the winter, holding services
three times a week--"a winter that ought to be worth ten years of any
other kind of life" Dollier calculated, counting up masses and vespers
and matins. Sometimes when the snow lay deep and the weird voices of the
wind hallooed with bugle sound through the lonely forest, the priests
listening inside fancied that they heard "the hunting of
Arthur,"--unearthly huntsmen coursing the air after unearthly game.

March 23 (Sunday), 1670, the company paraded down to Lake Erie from their
sheltered quarters, and, erecting a cross, took possession of this land
for France. Then they launched their boats to ascend the other Sweet
Water Seas. The preceding autumn the priests had lost some of their
baggage, and now, in camp near Point Pelee, a sweeping wave carried off
the packs in which were all the holy vessels and equipments for the
mission chapel. They decided to go back to Montreal by way of Sault Ste.
Marie, and ascended to Lake Ste. Claire. Game had been scarce for some
days, the weather tempestuous, and now the priests thought they had found
the cause. On one of the rocks of Lake Ste. Claire was a stone, to which
the Indians offered sacrifices for safe passage on the lakes. To the
priests the rude drawing of a face seemed graven images of
paganism,--signs of Satan, who had baffled their hunting and caused loss
{132} o