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INDIAN THOROUGHFARES
35

brance of which fills me with horror."[1]

A most vivid and interesting account of a journey made two centuries and a half ago through the primeval forests of Canada is left us in the writings of the brave Father Buteux, concerning a journey made northward from the St. Lawrence to the country of the Attikamègues in the year 1651:[2]

"On the 27th of March we started, four Frenchmen together—namely, Monsieur de Normanville and myself, with our two men—accompanied by about forty Savages, both adults and children. A squad of soldiers went with us the first day, for fear of the Iroquois. The weather was fine, but was not good for us on account of the heat of the Sun, which thawed the snow; this impeded our trains, and loaded our snowshoes, and even put us in peril of sinking into the water. I was suddenly endangered by a piece of ice that gave way under my feet; and had it not been for the assistance of a soldier, who held out his hand to me,

  1. Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, vol. xxxvii., p. 10.
  2. Id., vol. xxxvii., pp. 19–37.