ed, could only be carried
into execution by the continuous labors of many years. La Salle
returned to Canada full of bright dreams for the future. For more than
two years he was employed in rearing the walls of Fort Frontenac and
improving the region around. This important post occupied a commanding
position near the eastern extremity of Lake Ontario.

At the close of the year 1677 he again returned to France, to report
the progress he had made. His reception by the court was even more
cordial than before, and he received from the king new honors and more
extended privileges. On the 14th of July, 1678, he sailed from Rochelle
for Quebec. He took with him an Italian gentleman, by the name of
Tonti, as his lieutenant, and a party of thirty men. After a two
months' voyage, they landed at Quebec on the 15th of September. Then,
paddling up the swift current of the St. Lawrence, they passed the
little cluster of log-cabins surrounded with Indian wigwams at
Montreal, and after a voyage of between three and four hundred miles
reached Fort Frontenac.

This was indeed a post far away in the wilderness. It was strongly
built, with four bastions on the northern side of the entrance to the
lake, at the head of a snug forest-fringed bay, where quite a fleet of
small vessels could be sheltered from the winds.

It was a very curious spectacle which was then witnessed upon this
remote frontier of civilization. The unbroken wilderness, where wolves
howled and bears roamed, spread in apparently unbroken gloom in all
directions. The fort rose in quite massive proportions, enclosing
within its palisades a number of cabins, which the garrison occupied,
and which were stored with goods suitable for traffic with the natives.
There was a small green meadow spread around, which was covered with
wigwams of every picturesque variety. Groups of Indians, of various
tribes, were moving about. The warriors were painted and plumed, and
many of them very gorgeously attired. Women, young and graceful girls,
and little children, were clustered around the camp fires, some with
busy hands usefully employed; others shouting and sporting in all the
varieties of barbaric pastimes.

It was an instructive scene, emblematic of this fallen world. The
frowning fort, with its threatening armament, proclaimed that sin had
entered the world with its war and blood and misery, making man the
direful foe of his brother man. The crystal stream and lake; the azure
of