the good
Docteur's "hasty letter," by the State Historian of King Louis of
France,--and is thereby enabled to add an hitherto unknown link (which
turns out to be the second) in the chain of the earliest references to
Niagara Falls; and so, both in History and in Medicine, to assign to
good Docteur Gendron, a place (next alongside of the great Founder of
Quebec) in Niagara's Temple of Fame. For the Sieur Gendron probably
wrote from actual knowledge; he had probably, through some Huron
emissary, secured some of those "Erie Stones," that "Petrified Spray of
the Falls" in trade, at Niagara; he had doubtless tried the healing
qualities thereof on some of his Savage Patients--and let us hope that
this Niagara Remedy proved efficacious, and justified its wide-spread
reputation. At any rate, in recording its uses, and its distribution by
"Trade," and by probably himself using it in his Practice--limited then
to the Huron Indians; and the few Frenchmen (perhaps a score or more)
who then made their headquarters at the Home of the Jesuit Mission to
the Hurons,--he showed, even as many a good Physician of later days has
done, that he was a believer in, and user of, every one of Nature's
Remedies, as furnished by her to man, and in their simplest forms; and
if that Niagara product benefited his savage patients (mainly because
they had faith that it would do so) surely the good Docteur earned his
professional fee--which he probably had to take in trade--that is, in
furs.

Niagara, meaning thereby the Niagara Frontier, or, more properly, that
portion thereof which extended from Lake Ontario to about two miles
above the Falls (which included Fort Niagara, and the whole of the
famous Portage around the Cataract) even in Aboriginal days, before the
first Fort Niagara was built, when the Indians applied the word
Onguiaahra to the same territory, by reason of its accessibility, its
central location, its Portage and its "Erie Stones," was widely known
as a "Center of Trade." When the French became the masters of this
region its main importance lay in its portage; and the same is true of
it under British rule; and also under United States ownership, down to
1826, when the Erie Canal was completed.

And during all those three periods it was indeed a Trade Center. For
over it passed on their westward way, all the soldiers, French,
British, and American, who built or won, and garrisoned every fort and
trading post in the West. All the cannon,