During the winter the necessary material for the Griffin, as the new vessel was to be called, was carried over the long portage to the mouth of Cayuga Creek, above the falls, where a dock was prepared and the keel laid. La Salle sent the master-carpenter to Hennepin to desire him to drive the first bolt, but, as he says, his profession obliged him to decline the honour. La Salle returned to Fort Frontenac, leaving Tonty to finish the work. The Iroquois, in spite of their agreement with La Salle, watched the building of the Griffin with jealous dissatisfaction, and kept the little band of Frenchmen in a state of constant anxiety. Fortunately, one of their expeditions against the neighbouring tribes took the majority of them off, and the work was pushed forward with redoubled zeal, so that it might be completed before their return. The Indians that remained behind were too few to make an open attack, but they did their utmost to prevent the completion of the ship. One of them, feigning drunkenness, attacked the blacksmith and tried to kill him, but was driven off with a red-hot bar. Hennepin naïvely remarks that this, "together with the reprimand he received from me," obliged him to be gone. A native woman warned Tonty that an attempt would be made to burn the vessel. Failing in this, the Senecas tried to starve the French by refusing to sell them corn, and might have succeeded but for the efforts of two Mohegan hunters, who kept the workmen supplied with game from the surrounding forest. Finally, the Griffin was launched, amid the shouts of the French and the yelpings of the Indians, who forgot their displeasure in the novel spectacle. She was towed up the Niagara, and on the seventh of August, 1679, La Salle and his men sailed out over the placid waters of Lake Erie, the booming of his cannon announcing the approach of the first ship of the upper lakes. In the Griffin La Salle sailed through Lakes Eric, St. Clair, and Huron, to Michilimackinac, and thence crossed Lake Michigan to the entrance to Green Bay, where some of his men, sent on ahead, had collected a quantity of valuable furs. These he determined to send back to Canada, to satisfy the clamorous demands of his creditors, while he continued his voyage to the Mississippi. The Griffin set sail for Niagara on the eighteenth of September. She never reached her destination, and her fate has remained one of the mysteries of Canadian history.
VI
THE HIGHWAY OF THE FUR TRADE
Dear dark-brown waters, full of all the stain
Of sombre spruce-woods and the forest fens,
Laden with sound from far-off northern glens
Where winds and craggy cataracts complain,
Voices of streams and mountain pines astrain,
The pines that brood above the roaring foam
Of La Montague or Des Erables; thine home
Is distant yet, a shelter far to gain.
Aye, still to eastward, past the shadowy lake
And the long slopes of Rigaud toward the sun.
The mightier stream, thy comrade, waits for thee,
The beryl waters that espouse and take
Thine in their deep embrace, and bear thee on
In that great bridal journey to the sea.
LAMPMAN.
While Champlain was in Paris, in 1612, a young man, one Nicolas de Vignau, whom he had sent the previous year to visit the tribes of the Ottawa, reappeared, with a marvellous tale of what he had seen on his travels. He had found a great lake, he said, and out of it a river flowing north, which he had descended and reached the shores of the sea, where he had seen the wreck of an English ship. Seventeen days' travel by canoe, said Vignau, would bring one to the shores of his sea. Champlain was delighted, and prepared immediately to follow up this important discovery. He returned to Canada, and about the end of May 1613 set out from Montreal with Vignau and three companions. The rest of the story is better told in Parkman's words--and Parkman is here at his very best.
"All day they plied their paddles, and when the night came they made their campfire in the forest. Day dawned. The east glowed with tranquil fire, that pierced, with eyes of flame, the fir-trees whose jagged tops stood drawn in black against the burning heaven. Beneath the glossy river slept in shadow, or spread far and wide in sheets of burnished bronze; and the white moon, paling in the face of day, hung like a disk of silver in the western sky. Now a fervid light touched the dead top of the hemlock, and, creeping downward, bathed the mossy beard of the patriarchal cedar, unstirred in the breathless air. Now, a fiercer spark beamed from the east; and now, half risen on the sight, a dome of crimson fire, the sun blazed with floods of radiance across the awakened wilderness.
"The canoes were launched again, and the voyagers held their course. Soon the still surface was flecked with spots of foam; islets of froth floated by, tokens of some great convulsion. Then, on their left, the falling curtain of the Rideau shone like silver betwixt its bordering woods, and in front, white as a snow-drift, the cataracts of the Chaudière barred their way. They saw the unbridled river careering down its sheeted rocks, foaming in unfathomed chasms, wearying the solitude with the hoarse outcry of its agony and rage."
While the Indians threw an offering into the foam as an offering to the Manitou of the cataract, Champlain and his men shouldered their canoes and climbed over the long portage to the quiet waters of the Lake of the Chaudière, now Lake Des Chênes. Past the Falls of the Chats and a long succession of rapids they made their way, until at last, discouraged by the difficulties of the river, they took to the woods, and made their way through them, tormented by mosquitoes, to the village of Tessouat, one of the principal chiefs of the Algonquins, who welcomed Champlain to his country.
Feasting, the smoking of ceremonial pipes, and a great deal of speech-making followed. Champlain asked for men and canoes to conduct him to the country of the Nipissings, through whom he hoped to reach the North Sea. Tessouat and his elders looked dubious. They had no love for the Nipissings, and preferred to keep Champlain among themselves. Finally, at his urgent solicitation, they agreed, but as soon as he had left the lodge they changed their minds. Champlain returned and upbraided them as children who could not hold fast to their word. They replied that they feared that he would be lost in the wild north country, and among the treacherous Nipissings.
"But," replied Champlain, "this young man, Vignau, has been to their country, and did not find the road or the people so bad as you have said."