362 SAINTE MARIE. [1648. 



canoe enters a canal or ditch immediately above 

 them, and you land at the Mission, or Residence, 

 or Fort of Sainte Marie. 



Here was the centre and base of the Huron 

 missions ; and now, for once, one must wish that 

 Jesuit pens had been more fluent. They have told 

 us but little of Sainte Marie, and even this is to be 

 gathered chiefly from incidental allusions. In the 

 forest, which long since has resumed its reign over 

 this memorable spot, the walls and ditches of the 

 fortifications may still be plainly traced ; and the 

 deductions from these remains are in perfect accord 

 with what w^e can gather from the Relations and 

 letters of the priests.^ The fortified work which 

 inclosed the buildings was in the form of a par- 

 allelogram, about a hundred and seventy-five feet 

 long, and from eighty to ninety wide. It lay par- 

 allel with the riA^er, and somewhat more than a 

 hundi-ed feet distant from it. On two sides it was 

 a continuous wall of masonry,^ flanked with square 

 bastions, adapted to musketry, and probably used 

 as magazines, storehouses, or lodgmgs. The sides 

 towards the river and the lake had no other 

 defences than a ditch and palisade, flanked, like 

 the others, by bastions, over each of which was 

 displayed a large cross. ^ The buildings within 



1 Before rae is an elaborate plan of the remains, taken on the spot. 



2 It seems probable that the walls, of which the remains may stiU be 

 traced, were foundations supporting a wooden superstructure. Rague- 

 neau, in a letter to the General of the Jesuits, dated March 13, 1650, 

 alludes to the defences of Saint Marie as " une simple palissade." 



3 " Quatre grandes Croix qui sont aux quatre coins de nostre en- 

 clos." — Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, 81. 



