42 FOSSIL MEN. 



f ensible position, with fertile soil, and a hill command- 

 ing an extensive view of the great Canadian plain, 

 and this at the foot of the rapids which close the free 

 navigation of the St. Lawrence, and at the confluence 

 of the two greatest rivers of Canada, constituted a 

 combination of advantages equally appreciable to 

 the aborigines and to the French settlers, and which 

 still give to Montreal the first position as a Canadian 

 city. 



Sometime in the interval between 1535 and 1642, 

 Hochelaga had been utterly destroy ed, and the en- 

 croachments of the warlike Five Nations, or Iroquois, 

 from the south, had even made the island a sort of 

 frontier debatable land in which no man lived, and 

 to which it was dangerous to resort even for hunting. 

 A tradition current long afterwards among the Algon- 

 quins, and preserved by Charlevoix, told of a long 

 and bloody war between them and the Hochelagans, 

 terminated by a treacherous surprise at the little 

 Kiver Becancour, between Hochelaga and Stadacona, 

 in which the Hochelagans were defeated with the 

 loss of so many warriors that the stream acquired 

 the name of the putrid river from the number of 

 dead bodies left in it. This was a serious blow to 

 Hochelaga, leading afterwards to its fall by the hands 

 of another enemy. According to certain Indians 

 who represented themselves as the survivors of the 

 nation, and who visited the French colonists in 1642, 

 the town was finally taken and burned by the Hurons, 

 and its few remaining people had taken refuge with 



