386 RUIN OF THE HURONS. [1649. 



They loaded the rest of their prisoners with 

 their baggage and plunder, and drove them 

 through the forest southward, braining with their 

 hatchets any who gave out on the march. An 

 old woman, who had escaped out of the midst 

 of the flames of St. Ignace, made her way to 

 St. Michel, a large town not far from the desolate 

 site of St. Joseph. Here she found about seven 

 hundred Huron warriors, hastily mustered. She 

 set them on the track of the retreating Iroquois, 

 and they took up the chase, — but evidently with no 

 great eagerness to overtake their dangerous enemy, 

 well armed as he was with Dutch guns, while they 

 had little beside their bows and arrows. They 

 found, as they advanced, the dead bodies of prison- 

 ers tomahawked on the march, and others bound 

 fast to trees and half burned by the fagots piled 

 hastily around them. The Iroquois pushed for- 

 ward vrith such headlong speed, that the pursuers 

 could not, or would not, overtake them ; and, after 

 two days, they gave over the attempt. 



ments of broken pottery and half-consumed bone, together with trinkets 

 of stone, metal, or glass, which have survived the lapse of two centuries 

 and more. The place has been minutely examined bj Dr. Tache. 



