race of Hochelaga, whose town on the island of Montreal was
visited by Jacques Cartier in 1535, and had disappeared completely in
1608 when Champlain founded Quebec. "What had become of these people?"
writes Mr. Frey, in his pamphlet "The Mohawks." "An overwhelming force
of wandering Algonquins had destroyed their towns. To what new land had
they gone? I think we shall find them seated in the impregnable
strongholds among the hills and in the dense forests of the Mohawk
Valley."

It is my privilege to take up their theory from the Montreal end and in
the light of the local archaeology of this place and of early French
historical lore, to supply links which seem to throw considerable light
on the problem.

The description given by Cartier of the picturesque palisaded town
of Hochelaga, situated near the foot of Mount Royal, surrounded by
cornfields, has frequently been quoted. But other points of Cartier's
narrative, concerning the numbers and relations of the population, have
scarcely been studied. Let us examine this phase of it. During his first
voyage in 1534, in the neighbourhood of Gaspe, he met on the water the
first people speaking the tongue of this race, a temporary fishing
community of over 200 souls, men, women and children, in some 40
canoes, under which they slept, having evidently no village there, but
belonging, as afterwards is stated, to Stadacona. He seized and carried
to France two of them, who, when he returned next year, called the place
where they had been taken _Honguedo_, and said that the north shore,
above Anticosti Island, was the commencement of inhabited country which
led to _Canada_ (the Quebec region), Hochelaga, (Montreal) and the
country of _Saguenay_, far to the west "whence came the red copper" (of
which axes have since been found in the debris of Hochelaga, and which,
in fact, came from Lake Superior), and that no man they ever heard of
had ever been to the end of the great river of fresh water above. Here
we have the first indication of the racial situation of the Hochelagans.
At the mouth of the Saguenay River--so called because it was one of the
routes to the Sagnenay of the Algonquins, west of the Upper Ottawa--he
found four fishing canoes from Canada. Plenty of fishing was prosecuted
from this point upwards. In "the Province of Canada," he proceeds,
"there are several peoples in unwalled villages." At the Isle of
Orleans, just below Quebec, the principal peace chief, or, Agouha