250 LAHONTAN. 



qui viennent des Indes ou de faire des prises en course ; " the applica- 

 tion of which language was plainly not so wide as Charlevoix insinuates 

 to the French duchesse. 



Finally, the Jesuit partisans pronounced Lahontan nothing better than 

 a "savage," to which reproach he ingeniously replied, in the English 

 edition of his work : " These observators do me a great deal of honour, 

 so long as they do not explain theraselves so as to make me directly of 

 the same character with that which is tacked to the word "savase" by 

 the Europeans in their way of thinking ; for in saying only that I am of 

 the same temper with the savages, they give me, without design, the 

 character of the honestest man in the world." The anticipated charge 

 of barbarism in style he had already endeavoured to soften in the 

 Preface to the first edition of his travels, in the following way : " The 

 style of our author," he says, "will appear perhaps not the most pure and 

 polished; but this very thing ought to render him less exposed to the 

 suspicion of affectation ■ and besides, what else could be expected from 

 a youthful officer of marines? One thing, however, is certain, which 

 no discerning reader will fail to see : the writer applies himself solely 

 to the simple exposition of facts; he flatters nobody; he disguises 

 nothing; aud there may be justly attributed to him what is essential 

 in all good narrators, the characteristic of writing (without prejudice 

 to his duty to his God and his king be it said) as though he himself 

 had neither country nor creed." " His travels are written in a bar- 

 barous style," also asserts the NouvelleDictionnaire Histovique, quoted 

 above. That is, as we suppose, his sentences appear to the French 

 critic to want airiness and epigrammatic point. The English reader, 

 however, will not consider Lahontan's style so very much amiss; he 

 will. regard it, probably, as simply natural and straightforward. 

 {To be continued.) 



[Passages in Lahontan's Travels, of interest to the historian of 

 Toronto, are the following, : In his twenty-third letter — 



" Since we cannot destroy the Iroquois with our single forces, we are 

 necessarily obliged to have recourse to the savages that are our allies; 

 and it is certain, as they themselves foresee, that if these barbarians 

 could compass the destruction of our colonies, they would themselves 

 be subdued by them sooner or later, as it has happened to many other 

 nations: so they know it to be their interest to join with us to destroy 

 these banditti. Now, since they are well affected to this design, we 



