ected a solid
fortification or rampart. Heavy sticks of lumber had been set up on end
and joined firmly together, while at intervals cannon, taken from the
ships, had been placed in such a way as to command the approach in all
directions. The sequel showed that it was well, indeed, for the French
that they placed so little reliance on the friendship of the savages.

Donnacona was not long in putting in an appearance. Whatever may have
been his real feelings, the crafty old chief feigned a great delight at
the safe return of Cartier. At his solicitation Cartier paid a
ceremonial visit to the settlement of Stadacona, on October 13, ten
days after his return. The gentlemen of the expedition, together with
fifty sailors, all well armed and appointed, accompanied the leader.
The meeting between the Indians and their white visitors was similar to
those already described. Indian harangues and wild dancing and shouting
were the order of the day, while Cartier, as usual, distributed knives
and trinkets. The French were taken into the Indian lodges and shown
the stores of food laid up against the coming winter. Other objects,
too, of a new and peculiar interest were displayed: there were the
'scalp locks' of five men--'the skin of five men's heads,' says
Cartier,--which were spread out on a board like parchments. The Indians
explained that these had been taken from the heads of five of their
deadly enemies, the Toudamani, a fierce people living to the south,
with whom the natives of Stadacona were perpetually at war.

A gruesome story was also told of a great massacre of a war party of
Donnacona's people who had been on their way down to the Gaspe country.
The party, so the story ran, had encamped upon an island near the
Saguenay. They numbered in all two hundred people, women and children
being also among the warriors, and were gathered within the shelter of
a rude stockade. In the dead of night their enemies broke upon the
sleeping Indians in wild assault; they fired the stockade, and those
who did not perish in the flames fell beneath the tomahawk. Five only
escaped to bring the story to Stadacona. The truth of the story was
proved, long after the writing of Cartier's narrative, by the finding
of a great pile of human bones in a cave on an island near Bic, not far
from the mouth of the Saguenay. The place is called L'Isle au Massacre
to-day.

The French now settled down into their winter quarters. They seem for
some time to