148 DENONVILLE AND THE SENECAS. [1687. 



crossed the foot of Lake Ontario, and moved west- 

 ward along the southern shore. The weather was 

 rough, and six days passed before he descried the 

 low headlands of Irondequoit Bay. Far off on the 

 glimmering water, he saw a multitude of canoes 

 advancing to meet him. It was the flotilla of La 

 Durantaye. Good management and good luck had 

 so disposed it that the allied bands, concentring 

 from points more than a thousand miles distant, 

 reached the rendezvous on the same day. This 

 was not all. The Ottawas of Michillimackinac, who 

 refused to folloAV La Durantaye, had changed their 

 minds the next morning, embarked in a body, pad- 

 dled up the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, crossed 

 to Toronto, and joined the allies at Niagara. White 

 and red, Denonville now had nearly three thousand 

 men under his command. 1 



All were gathered on the low point of land that 

 separates Irondequoit Bay from Lake Ontario. 

 " Never," says an eye-witness, " had Canada seen 

 such a sight ; and never, perhaps, will she see such 

 a sight again. Here was the camp of the regulars 

 from France, with the general's head-quarters ; the 

 camp of the four battalions of Canadian militia, 

 commanded by the nohlesse of the country ; the 

 camp of the Christian Indians ; and, farther on, a 

 swarm of savages of every nation. Their features 

 were different, and so were their manners, their 

 weapons, their decorations, and their dances. They 

 sang and whooped and harangued in every accent 



1 Recueil dece qui s' est passe' en Canada depuis 1682; Captain Duplessis's 

 Plan for the Defence of Canada, in N. Y. Col Docs., IX. 447. 



