CHAPTER VII. 



TWO DAYS AT SYRACUSE. 



AD an early breakfast at Chittenango and 

 calling for Pdul at eight o'clock mounted 

 and rode forward, with the city of Syra- 

 cuse as my evening destination. Nothing 

 of especial interest occurred to vary the 

 day's journey. Syracuse was reached at 

 four o'clock in the afternoon, and the 

 remainder of the day was spent in walks 

 and drives through the city which I had 

 visited several times in former years, and of whose his- 

 tory I had a fair knowledge. Long before the white man 

 came, a band of Iroquois had built their wigwams in the 

 low basin, almost entirely surrounded by hills, that lies to 

 the south of Lake Onondaga, and from here followed 

 the pursuits of war and peace. We first hear of this 

 Indian village in 1653 through the Jesuit missionary, 

 Father Le Moyne, who had come to establish good 

 feeling between the Iroquois and other Indian tribes : 

 and we see strange evidences of a counteracting in- 

 fluence made probably by his own countrymen in 

 the discovery of European weapons and ammunition, 

 that were distributed among the red men about the 



same time. For more than a hundred years after 

 a48) 



