42 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Ten years ago I published in Harper's Magazine (Sept. 1893) what 

 I then knew of this gentleman-adventurer, explorer and fur-trader. 



He had Italian as well as French blood in his veins, and was born 

 at St. Germain-en-Laye about the middle of the seventeenth century. 

 He was ensign in La Compagnie Lyonnaise in 1657, and in 1664 was 

 a gendarme de la Garde du Roy, the Kjng's Body Guard, which fixes his 

 gentility beyond question, for one of the qualifications was the proof 

 of the right to bear arms for two hundred years (deux cents ans de 

 noblesse). 



There can be as little doubt as to his title of explorer. M. Henri 

 Lorin in his admirable study on Frontenac says that Dulhut " is a dis- 

 coverer of the same title as LaSalle." As to fur-trader, every one in 

 Canada from the governor downwards, men, women, clergy and laity 

 were, or wished to be engaged in this extremely lucrative traffic. 



When he came out to Canada I do not know, but he was in Montreal 

 before 1674. That year he sailed for France and was in time to play 

 his part as squire to the Marquis de Lassay through that awful August 

 day at Senetf on the borders of Brabant. Senejff is a name which 

 arouses no remembrance in English breasts to-day; but it was so close an 

 affair between Condé and our Prince of Orange that it was doubtful with 

 whom the advantage lay until Condé followed William and forced him 

 to raise the siege of Oudenarde. The Hollanders and Spanish num- 

 bered 90,000 and the French less, each side lost between seven and eight 

 thousand men. Condé had three horses killed under him and as the 

 young Marquis de Lassay had two horses killed and was thrice wounded, 

 his squire, our M. Dulhut, must have seen very active service on that 

 now almost forgotten day. 



It is a curious coincidence that the Eecollet father, le révérend 

 père Louis Hennepin, was at Seneff that day looking after the wounded, 

 shriving the dying. It is improbable there was any meeting then, but 

 years afterwards Dulhut and Hennepin met on the upper waters of the 

 Mississippi, when the ipriest was in even greater danger than on the 

 field of Seneff. 



Dulhut must have returned to Canada by the last vessels of that 

 year and when we next hear of him he and his younger brother Claude 

 Gr^ysolon de la Tourette had leased a modest property from Pierre 

 Pigeon on the south-east corner of JSTotre-Dame and St. Sulpice (then 

 St. Joseph) streets. 



The brothers had both friends and relations in Canada ; their uncle 

 Jacques Patron had apparently been in Canada since 1659; their 

 brother-in-law, Louis Tayeon, Sieur de Lussigny, was an officer in Fron- 

 tenac's guard; Alphonse and his more famous brother Henri de Tonti, 



