1640.] PERILS. 143 



of their manners, and the extravagance of their 

 superstitions, no American tribe has ever exceeded 

 them. They carried to a preposterous excess the 

 Indian notion, that insanity is endowed with a 

 mysterious and superhuman power. Their country 

 was full of pretended maniacs, who, to propitiate 

 their guardian spirits, or oMes, and acquire the 

 mystic virtue which pertained to madness, raved 

 stark naked through the villages, scattering the 

 brands of the lodge-fires, and upsetting everything 

 in their way. 



The two priests left Sainte Marie on the second 

 of November, found a Huron guide at St. Joseph, 

 and, after a dreary march of five days through the 

 forest, reached the first Neutral town. Advancing 

 thence, they visited in tm^n eighteen others ; and 

 their progress was a storm of maledictions. Bre- 

 beuf especially was accounted the most pestilent 

 of sorcerers. The Hurons, restrained by a super- 

 stitious awe, and unwilling to kill the priests, lest 

 they should embroil themselves with the French at 



translation, from his Relation of 1641, shows that both Lake Ontario and 

 Lake Erie had already taken their present names. 



"This river" (the Niagara) "is tlie same by which our great lake 

 of the Hurons, or Fresh Sea, discharges itself, in the first place, into Lake 

 Erie [le lac d'Erie), or the Lake of the Cat Nation. Then it enters the 

 territories of the Neutral Nation, and takes the name of Onguiaahra 

 (Niagara), until it discharges itself into Ontario, or the Lake of St. Louis ; 

 whence at last issues the river which passes before Quebec, and is called 

 the St. Lawrence." He makes no allusion to the cataract, which is first 

 mentioned as follows by Eagueneau, in the Relation of 1648. 



"Nearly south of this same Neutral Nation there is a great lake, 

 about two hundred leagues in circuit, named Erie (Erie), which is formed 

 by the discharge of the Fresh Sea, and which precipitates itself by a cat- 

 aract of frightful height into a third lake, named Ontario, which we call 

 Lake St. Louis." — Relation des Hurons, 1648, 46. 



