soon result in exposing
the imposture which had occasioned it. Champlain took counsel of the
Indians. The party left the river, and entered the forest.

"We had a hard march," says Champlain. "I carried for my share of
the luggage three arquebuses, three paddles, my overcoat, and a few
bagatelles. My men carried a little more than I did, and suffered more
from the mosquitoes than from their loads. After we had passed four
small ponds and advanced two leagues and a half, we were so tired that
we could go no farther, having eaten nothing but a little roasted fish
for nearly twenty-four hours. So we stopped in a pleasant place enough
by the edge of a pond, and lighted a fire to drive off the mosquitoes,
which plagued us beyond all description; and at the same time we set our
nets to catch a few fish."

On the next day they fared still worse, for their way was through a pine
forest where a tornado had passed, tearing up the trees and piling them
one upon another in a vast "windfall," where boughs, roots, and trunks
were mixed in confusion. Sometimes they climbed over and sometimes
crawled through these formidable barricades, till, after an exhausting
march, they reached the banks of Muskrat Lake, by the edge of which was
an Indian settlement.

This neighborhood was the seat of the principal Indian population of the
river, and, as the canoes advanced, unwonted signs of human life could
be seen on the borders of the lake. Here was a rough clearing. The trees
had been burned; there was a rude and desolate gap in the sombre green
of the pine forest. Dead trunks, blasted and black with fire, stood
grimly upright amid the charred stumps and prostrate bodies of comrades
half consumed. In the intervening spaces, the soil had been feebly
scratched with hoes of wood or bone, and a crop of maize was growing,
now some four inches high. The dwellings of these slovenly farmers,
framed of poles covered with sheets of bark, were scattered here and
there, singly or in groups, while their tenants were running to the
shore in amazement. The chief, Nibachis, offered the calumet, then
harangued the crowd: "These white men must have fallen from the clouds.
How else could they have reached us through the woods and rapids which
even we find it hard to pass? The French chief can do anything. All
that we have heard of him must he true." And they hastened to regale the
hungry visitors with a repast of fish.

Champlain asked for guidance to the s