onderful fortitude of
his race, but not with their stoic silence. Instead, he breathed out
threatenings, and promised the fell destruction of the pale-faced
interlopers. Even now, he told them, hundreds of his kinsmen were
gathering upon the Ottawa and St. Lawrence for the final effacement of
Quebec, and with hideous fury the baptized savage called down upon
them the wrath of his gods.

Forthwith Quebec became deeply alarmed. The desultory attacks of the
Iroquois were now to be exchanged for a deliberate assault in which
the whole strength of the Five Nations should be thrown into the
struggle. The Ursulines and nuns of the Hotel-Dieu forsook their
convents to take refuge in the fortified college of the Jesuits,
whither the fugitives from the surrounding settlements also fled. A
company of soldiers took up their quarters in the Ursuline Convent,
the redoubts of the fort were strengthened, and barricades were
erected in the streets of Lower Town. All night long sentries paced
the parapets, peering anxiously into the surrounding darkness, and
straining their ears for the creeping tread in the thicket.

After several days of watching, however, no Iroquois appeared, and the
inhabitants began to breathe freely again. The more courageous
returned to their deserted homes and farms, but the timid still clung
to the blockhouse. The panic had also spread to Ville Marie,[5] and
the imminence of this danger produced one of the most brilliant
exploits which Canadian history records--a feat of daring closely
resembling, and not surpassed by, the achievement of Leonidas in the
Pass of Thermopylae.

The story is one of the finest in the picturesque pages of Parkman,
part of whose narrative is here transcribed.

[Footnote 5: Now Montreal.]

* * * * *

Adam Daulac, or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, was a young man of good
family, who had come to the colony three years before, at the age of
twenty-two. He had held some military rank in France, and it was not
long before he set on foot a remarkable Indian enterprise. Sixteen
young men caught his spirit, struck hands with him, and pledged their
word. They bound themselves by oath to accept no quarter, made their
wills, confessed, and received the sacrament. After a solemn farewell,
they embarked in several canoes, well supplied with arms and
ammunition. Descending the St. Lawrence, they entered the mouth of the
Ottawa, crossed the Lake of Two Mountains, and slowly advan