back the rest
discomfited. Champlain and his Frenchmen were forced to interpose; and
the report of their pieces from the border of the woods stopped the
pursuing enemy, who withdrew to their defences, bearing with them their
dead and wounded.

It appears to have been a fortified town of the Onondagas, the central
tribe of the Iroquois confederacy, standing, there is some reason to
believe, within the limits of Madison County, a few miles south of Lake
Oneida. Champlain describes its defensive works as much stronger than
those of the Huron villages. They consisted of four concentric rows of
palisades, formed of trunks of trees, thirty feet high, set aslant
in the earth, and intersecting each other near the top, where they
supported a kind of gallery, well defended by shot-proof timber, and
furnished with wooden gutters for quenching fire. A pond or lake, which
washed one side of the palisade, and was led by sluices within the town,
gave an ample supply of water, while the galleries were well provided
with magazines of stones.

Champlain was greatly exasperated at the desultory and futile procedure
of his Huron allies. Against his advice, they now withdrew to the
distance of a cannon-shot from the fort, and encamped in the forest, out
of sight of the enemy. "I was moved," he says, "to speak to them roughly
and harshly enough, in order to incite them to do their duty; for I
foresaw that if things went according to their fancy, nothing but harm
could come of it, to their loss and ruin. He proceeded, therefore, to
instruct them in the art of war."

In the morning, aided doubtless by his ten or twelve Frenchmen, they set
themselves with alacrity to their prescribed task. A wooden tower was
made, high enough to overlook the palisade, and large enough to shelter
four or five marksmen. Huge wooden shields, or movable parapets, like
the mantelets of the Middle Ages, were also constructed. Four hours
sufficed to finish the work, and then the assault began. Two hundred of
the strongest warriors dragged the tower forward, and planted it within
a pike's length of the palisade. Three arquebusiers mounted to the top,
where, themselves well sheltered, they opened a raking fire along the
galleries, now thronged with wild and naked defenders. But nothing could
restrain the ungovernable Hurons. They abandoned their mantelets,
and, deaf to every command, swarmed out like bees upon the open field,
leaped, shouted, shrieked their war-cries