42 THE DISCOVERY OF BURLINGTON BAY. 



on the Hudson, but hostile to everybody, their hand being against 

 every man. Thus it occurred that while the Jesuit missionaries, those 

 indomitable pioneers of discovery, became familiar (through follow- 

 ing the return of Indian bands from their trading expeditions,) with 

 the great northern waterway of the Ottawa and French rivers on the 

 one hand, and Lake Champlain, the Hudson and Richelieu rivers on 

 the other, the now greater waterway of the Upper St. Lawrence, 

 Lakes Ontario, Erie, &c, was for a long period entirely un- 

 known. This is to be accounted for by the fact that these, forming 

 as they did, the dividing line between those two hostile nations, were 

 too dangerous to be used as a thoroughfare. 



Some four or five of those Jesuit missionaries had for several 

 years been laboring among the numerous Huron towns along the 

 east coast of the Georgian bay, then known as the Great Fresh Sea, 

 with very indifferent success, but with a zeal and courage under 

 hardships and cruelties worse than death, and even in martyrdom it- 

 self, that won respect even from their tormentors. They were in the 

 habit ofsendinghome periodically to their superiors in France, reports, 

 or " relations" as they are called, of all their transactions, giving the 

 most circumstantial details of every event which came under their 

 notice, even to the surrepetitious baptizing of an infant of an un- 

 friendly savage. These Jesuit relations, many of which have been 

 published, afford us the earliest glimpses of Canadian history. The 

 missionaries to the Hurons, though accustomed to make excursions 

 in various directions up and down through the northern country, do 

 not seem to have penetrated nearer to the ground upon which we 

 now stand than Lake Simcoe, that being the northern limit of the 

 Huron lands, for lying to the south of the Huron and along the 

 north shore of Lake Erie, between the Niagara and Detroit rivers, 

 was a small tribe called by the French the Neuters. This tribe, 

 though considered a small one, had forty populous towns and vil- 

 lages. Situated as they were however, between the greater nations 

 of the Hurons on the one side, and the Iroquois on the other, 

 and fearful of giving offence to either, they rejected most decidedly 

 all recorded attempts of the Jesuits to penetrate their country. 



The intrepid Champlain, too, had made an excursion up the 

 Ottawa and along the shores of the Georgian Bay, and being per- 

 suaded to join the Hurons in a foray against the Iroquois passed with 



