150 DEXONVILLE AND THE SENEGAS. [1687. 



from the bay to the great Seneca town, twenty- 

 two miles southward. They marched three leagues 

 through the open forests of oak, and encamped 

 for the night. In the morning, the heat was 

 intense. The men gasped in the dead and sultry 

 air of the woods, or grew faint in the pitiless sun, 

 as they waded waist-deep through the rank grass 

 of the narrow intervales. They passed safely 

 through two dangerous defiles, and, about two in 

 the afternoon, began to enter a third. Dense 

 forests covered the hills on either hand. La Du- 

 rantaye with Tonty and his cousin Du Lhut led the 

 advance, nor could all Canada have supplied three 

 men better for the work. Each led his band of 

 conreurs de bois, white Indians, without discipline, 

 and scarcely capable of it, but brave and accus- 

 tomed to the woods. On their left were the Iro- 

 quois converts from the missions of Saut St. Louis 

 and the Mountain of Montreal, fighting under the 

 influence of their ghostly prompters against their 

 own countrymen. On the right were the pagan 

 Indians from the west. The woods were full of 

 these painted spectres, grotesquely horrible in 

 horns and tail ; and among them flitted the black 

 robe of Father Engelran, the Jesuit of Michilli- 

 mackinac. Nicolas Perrot and two other bush- 

 ranging Frenchmen were assigned to command 

 them, but in fact they obeyed no man. These 

 formed the vanguard, eight or nine hundred in all, 

 under an excellent officer, Callieres, governor of 

 Montreal. Behind came the main body under 

 Denonville, each of the four battalions of regulars 



