ted to the work to which he had consecrated his life, and
on the rude frontiers of the New World living in a spirit worthy of the
best ages of chivalry.

The Father of New France is worthily commemorated by a noble monument
erected in 1898 and unveiled in the presence of distinguished {144}
representatives of Canada, Great Britain, France, and the United States.
It stands within the area once covered by Champlain's fort and presents
the hero holding in his hand the King's open commission, while with bared
head he salutes the child of his hopes, New France.

[1] This place, at the confluence of the Saguenay with the St. Lawrence,
was peculiarly well situated for the fur-trade. The Saguenay, having its
head-waters far to the north in the dreary region near Hudson Bay, rich
in furs, was the route by which the natives of that wild country brought
their peltries to market.

[2] The Indians were much given to various forms of divination by which
they believed that they ascertained the will of the unseen powers.

Jonathan Carver, who traveled much among the western tribes, about 1766,
relates that once when he was with a band of Christinos, or Crees, on the
north shore of Lake Superior, anxiously awaiting the coming of certain
traders with goods, the chief told him that the medicine-man, or
conjurer, or "clairvoyant" as we should say, would try to get some
information from the Manitou. Elaborate preparations were made. In a
spacious tent, brightly lighted with torches of pitch-pine, the conjurer,
wrapped in a large elk-skin, and corded with about forty yards of
elk-hide lariat--"bound up like an Egyptian mummy"--was laid down in the
midst of the assembly, in full view of all.

Presently he began to mutter, then to jabber a mixed jargon of several
native tongues, sometimes raving, sometimes praying, till he had worked
himself into a frenzy and foamed at the mouth.

Suddenly he leaped to his feet, shaking off his bands "as if they were
burnt asunder," and announced that the Manitou had revealed to him that,
just at noon on the next day, there would arrive a canoe the occupants of
which would bring news as to the expected traders.

On the next day Carver and his Indian friends were on the bluff watching.
At the appointed hour a canoe (undoubtedly sent by the conjurer) came
into view and was hailed by the Indians with shouts of delight. It
brought tidings of the early coming of the traders.

[3] This was the estab