Famous Firesides of French Canada

by Mary Wilson Alloway

La Salle had heard from some stray bands of Seneca Indians, who had visited his post at Lachine, of a great river that flowed from their hunting grounds to the sea. Imagining it would open his way to find the route to the golden Ind, he sold his grant at Lachine, and in company with two priests from the Seminary at Montreal, and some Senecas as guides, started on July 6th, 1669. With visions of finding for France a clime of warmer suns and more rich in silver and gold than Canada, he pushed on. The priests on their return brought back nothing of any value except the first map procured of the upper lake region.

One of the most enthusiastic fellow travelers of La Salle was a Franciscan, Father Hennepin. They crossed the ocean from France together, and probably beguiled many an hour of the long voyage in relating their dreams of finding the treasures hidden in the land to which the prow of the vessel pointed.

Hennepin also penetrated to the Mississippi, reaching in his wanderings a beautiful fall foaming between its green bluffs which he named St. Anthony, on which spot now stands the "Flour City," Minneapolis, in the county of Hennepin, Minnesota. He probably heard of the other falls, five miles away, which we know as Minnehaha, and around which the sweetest of American poets has woven the witchery of Indian legend in the wooing of "Hiawatha." It seems almost incredible that where are now the largest flour mills in the world, turning out daily about 40,000 barrels, there was, scarcely fifty years ago, only the cedar strewn wigwam and smoke of the camp fire, the tread of moccasined feet and the dip of the paddles by the bark canoe.

Near by Place d'Armes Square may be seen a grey stone house on which is written "Here lived Sieur DuLuth." He was a leading spirit among the young men of the town, who gathered around his fireside to listen to his thrilling tales of adventure, and of his early life when he was a gendarme in the King's Guard. Coming to Canada in the year 1668, he explored among the Sioux tribes of the Western plains. He was one of the first Frenchmen to approach the sources of the Mississippi. The city of Duluth in Minnesota received its name from him. A tablet on a modern building in the same locality informs the passer-by that Cadillac, who founded the City of Detroit about the same time as the Château de Ramezay was built, spent the last years of his wandering life on this spot.

The town of Varennes, down the river, is called from the owner of a Seigniory in the forest, le Chevalier Gauthier de la Vérandrye, a soldier and a trader, who was the first to explore the great Canadian North-West, and to discover the "Rockies." He was an undaunted and fearless traveler, establishing post after post, as far as the wild banks of the Saskatchewan and even further north, which, in giving to France, he ultimately gave to Canada.

"Honour to those who fought the trees,
And won the land for us."

The traditions connected with the Château de Ramezay are scarcely more interesting than those surrounding many spots in the vicinity. Incorporated in this prosaic, business part of the city are many an old gable or window, which were once part of some mediæval chapel or home of these early times. On the other side of Notre Dame street, where now stands the classic and beautiful pile called the City Hall, were to be seen in those days the church and "Habitation," as it was called, of the Jesuit Fathers, within whose walls lived many learned sons of Loyola, Charlevoix among others. They were burnt down in 1803, at the same time as the Château de Vaudreuil was destroyed, by one of the disastrous fires which have so frequently swept the cities of Montreal and Quebec, and in which many quaint historical structures disappeared. About a mile to the west is still standing the family residence of Daniel Hyacinthe, Marie Liénard de Beaujeu, the hero of the Monongahela, at which battle George Washington was an officer.

It was a lamentable event, the indiscriminate slaughter of three thousand men through the stupidity and incredible obstancy of General Braddock, who, like Dieskau at a subsequent time, despising the counsel of those familiar with Indian methods of warfare, determinedly followed his own plans.