[17.] (p. [73])—Berosus (325-255 B. C., circa), a Chaldean priest, astrologer, and historian. His best known work is the Babylonica, a history of Babylonia; its remaining fragments have been reproduced by several European writers, especially in Richter's Berosi Chald. Historiæ quae supersunt (Leipsic, 1825).
[18.] (p. [75])—The Tolosains were a tribe of the Volcæ of Gaul. Another tribe of the Volcæ were the Tectosages—so called from their sagum (frock or cloak).
[19.] (p. [75])—Membertou was chief of all the Micmac groups from Gaspé to Cape Sable. Champlain writes, that he was "a friendly savage, although he had the name of being the worst and most traitorous man of his tribe." Lescarbot called him "the chef d'œuvre of Christian piety," and Biard had strong faith in him. He claimed to remember the first visit of Cartier (1534).
[20.] (p. [77])—Biard, six years later, complains bitterly of this overhaste in baptizing, declaring that these savages, when he went among them in 1611, did not know the first principles of the Faith, and had even forgotten their Christian names.
[21.] (p. [81])—In the original edition, pp. 25 and 26, apparently through an error in make-up, are verbal repetitions of the two preceding pages. This duplication has been omitted in the present edition.
[22.] (p. [105])—Marked changes occurred in the population of the St. Lawrence valley, between the visits of Cartier (1535) and Champlain (1603). Morgan, in League of the Iroquois (Rochester, 1851), p. 5, maintains the correctness of a tradition that the aborigines whom Cartier found at Hochelaga were Iroquois, and that they then were subject to the Algonkins, whom Champlain found in possession of the valley. Cf. Parkman's Pioneers, p. 208, and Schoolcraft's Hist. of Indian Tribes of the U. S., vol. vi., pp. 33, 188. For further treatment of the migrations of the Iroquois, see Introduction to Hale's Iroquois Book of Rites (Phila., 1883), and Faillon's Col. Fr., vol. i., pp. 524, et seq.
[23.] (p. [107])—Tabagie. A feast described fully in one of the later Relations.
[24.] (p. [107])—This easy victory of the French and Algonkins over the Iroquois (July 29, 1609), on the western shores of Lake Champlain, cost New France dearly, as it secured for the struggling colony the deadly enmity of the most warlike savages on the continent, for nearly a century and a half. It was impossible for New France to make permanent headway when sapped by such an enemy. Slafter's exhaustive notes to Champlain's Voyages (Prince Soc.), vol. i., p. 91, and vol. ii., p. 223, make it clear that the site of this momentous skirmish was Ticonderoga.
[25.] (p. [109])—Jessé Fléché, a secular priest from the diocese of Langres, was invited by Poutrincourt to accompany the first colony to Acadia. The papal nuncio gave him authority to absolve in all cases, except those reserved to the pope.—Faillon's Col. Fr., vol. i., p. 99. Poutrincourt evidently meant to Christianize Acadia without the aid of the Jesuits. The wholesale baptism of savages by Fléché, before the arrival of Biard and Massé, was, according to Faillon (Ibid., vol. i., p. 100), condemned as a profanation by good Catholics, "tous les théologiens, and notamment la Sorbonne."—Cf. also note 19, ante, and Sagard's Histoire du Canada, p. 97. He had been at Port Royal nearly a year before the arrival of the Jesuits. The name is variously spelled: Fleche, Fléche, Flèche, Fléché, Flesche, Fleuchy, and Fleuche; see Sulte's Poutrincourt en Acadie, p. 38. See Bourinot's picturesque description of the baptismal scene, in Can. Royal Soc. Trans., sec. ii, p. 73. Fléché was much esteemed by the Micmacs; his nickname, "Le Patriarch," is still current among them corrupted into "Patliasse," as the name for a priest.—See Ferland's Cours d'Histoire (Quebec, 1861), vol. i, p. 80.
[26.] (p. [127])—The four letters here given (Biard, Jan. 21, June 10, and June 11, 1611; and Massé, June 11, 1611) are from Carayon's Première Mission des Jésuites au Canada: Lettres et Documents Inédits (Paris, 1864). All of the documents in Carayon's collection will be published in this series, in chronological order, with that Editor's valuable footnotes.