294 PEACE. [1645. 



on the tenth of September, appeared the great fleet 

 of the Hurons, sixty canoes, bearing a host of war- 

 riors, among whom the French recognized the 

 tattered black cassock of Father Jerome Lalemant. 

 There were twenty French soldiers, too, returning 

 from the Huron country, whither they had been 

 sent the year before, to guard the Fathers and their 

 flock. 



Three Rivers swarmed like an ant-hill with sav- 

 ages. The shore was lined with canoes ; the 

 forests and the fields were alive with busy camps. 

 The trade was brisk ; and in its attendant speeches, 

 feasts, and dances, there was no respite. 



But where were the Iroquois ] Montmagny and 

 the Jesuits grew very anxious. In a few days 

 more the concourse would begin to disperse, and 

 the golden moment be lost. It was a great relief 

 when a canoe appeared with tidings that the prom- 

 ised embassy was on its way ; and yet more, when, 

 on the seventeenth, four Iroquois approached the 

 shore, and, in a loud voice, annomiced themselves 

 as envoys of their nation. The tumult was prodig- 

 ious. Montmagny's soldiers formed a double rank, 

 and the savage rabble, with wild eyes and faces 

 smeared with grease and paint, stared over the 

 shoulders and between the gun-barrels of the mus- 

 keteers, as the ambassadors of their deadliest foe 

 stalked, with unmoved visages, towards the fort. 



Now council followed council, with an insufl'er- 

 able prolixity of speech-making. There were belts 

 to wipe out the memory of the slain ; belts to clear 

 the sky, smooth the rivers, and calm the lakes ; a 



