1691.] IROQUOIS INROADS. 287 



swallows, the bluebirds, and the Iroquois. They 

 rarely came in winter, when the trees and bushes 

 had no leaves to hide them, and their movements 

 were betrayed by the track of their snow-shoes ; 

 but they were always to be expected at the time 

 of sowing and of harvest, when they could do 

 most mischief. During April, about eight hundred 

 of them, gathering from their winter hunting- 

 grounds, encamped at the mouth of the Ottawa, 

 whence they detached parties to ravage the settle- 

 ments. A large band fell upon Point aux Trembles, 

 below Montreal, burned some thirty houses, and 

 killed such of the inmates as could not escape. An- 

 other band attacked the Mission of the Mountain, 

 just behind the town, and captured thirty-five of 

 the Indian converts in broad daylight. Others 

 prowled among the deserted farms on both shores 

 of the St. Lawrence ; while the inhabitants remained 

 pent in their stockade forts, with misery in the 

 present and starvation in the future. 



Troops and militia were not wanting. The dif- 

 ficulty was to find provisions enough to enable them 

 to keep the field. By begging from house to house, 

 getting here a biscuit and there a morsel of bacon, 

 enough was collected to supply a considerable party 

 for a number of clays ; and a hundred and twenty 

 soldiers and Canadians went out under Vaudreuil 

 to hunt the hunters of men. Long impunity had 

 made the Iroquois so careless that they were easily 

 found. A band of about forty had made their 

 quarters at a house near the fort at Eepentigny, 

 and here the French scouts discovered them early 



