THE OAK.
The two villages referred to are Hochelaga and Ville Marie, now Montreal. The latter place was founded by Maisonneuve in 1642. In Sir William Dawson's Fossil Men is a picture of Hochelaga as seen by Cartier, with an oak tree near it. This oak is sketched from one in the McGill University grounds, and it needs but a little stretch of the imagination to consider them identical, though actually this is not so. The poem traces the history of Montreal from its foundation up to the present time. Jacques Cartier's visit was made in October, 1535, when he was well received by the Hochelagans. When Champlain came, in 1611, Hochelaga had disappeared. The reference to the flood occurs again in "Nelson's Appeal for Maisonneuve." The incident took place in 1642, and Maisonneuve actually fulfilled his vow and bore a heavy cross to the mountain top, where it was planted. Dollard, with seventeen Frenchmen and fifty Indians, by heroic self-sacrifice, in 1660, saved Canada from destruction by the Iroquois. Vaudreuil surrendered Canada to the English on September 8th, 1760. He had been driven to Montreal, and was surrounded by 17,000 men, under General Amherst. The Americans took Montreal in 1775, and were defeated at Chateauguay, October 26th, 1813, and at Chrysler's Farm, November 11th, of the same year. In both cases, the Canadians were greatly outnumbered.