40 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Madawescok. There an old man lived and kept a sort of trading 

 house, where we tarried several days. Then we went further down 

 the river till we came to the greatest falls in these parts, which they call 

 Checanekepeag^ (the Grand Falls), where we carried a little way 

 overland, and putting off our canoes again we went down stream still, 

 and as w^e passed the mouths of any large branches we saw Indians. 

 At length we arrived at the place where we left our canoes in the fall, 

 and putting our baggage in them went down to the Medoctec Fort." 



Gyles remained six years with the Indians. Then through the 

 kindness of the Recollet missionary, Father Simon, he was taken 

 into the family of Louis d'Amours, sieur de Chaufïours, who lived 

 at Fort Jemsek, where he continued three years, experiencing very 

 kindly treatment, of which he writes gratefully in his narrative. He 

 was then restored to his friends in New England who welcomed him, 

 after his nine years' captivity, almost as one risen from the dead. 



Next in order among the old time voyageurs we must place the 

 French explorer, Lamothe Cadiallac, the founder of Detroit, who 

 ascended the River St. John in 1692 and reported that 40 leagues 

 above the Medoctec village he found another fort to which the 

 Malacites were wont to retire when they feared some great calamity 

 was impending. Cadiallac writes entertainingly and with enthusiasm 

 of the noble river, which he ascended nearly 150 leagues in a birch 

 canoe. He speaks of it as a well-known route of communication 

 between the people of Acadia and those of Quebec. The Indians had 

 used the route from time immemorial, both in war and peace, and 

 the French followed their example as, at a later period, did the English. 



The St. John River country may be considered as a "disputed 

 territory" from the moment when the treaty of Utrecht was signed 

 in 1713 until the capture of Quebec by Wolfe's army in 1759. The 

 missionaries of this region, de I'lsle-Dieu, Germain, and le Loutre, 

 not unnaturally were desirous of seeing French supremacy restored in 

 Acadia, and Father Germain, the missionary to the Indians on the 

 St. John, encouraged the Malacites in their hostility to the English. 

 He proceeded to Quebec in 1743, returning with a supply of powder, 

 lead and ball, for the Indian warriors at Ekpahawk, whom he accom- 

 panied in their mid-winter raid on Colonel Noble's post at Grand Pré. 

 This raid, from the French point of view, was one of the most brilliant 

 exploits in the annals of Acadia, and, what is better, the victors 

 behaved with humanity to the vanquished. 



Commissioners were now appointed by the contending parties 

 to determine the limits of Acadia. They spent four years in fruitless 

 ^The name signifies "a destroying giant." 



