eted commodities, their beloved tobacco and fire-water to the Indians who visited them at their posts, or on occasions when they visited them at their own villages. In those days along the lake shore villages of the Ojibways, from Mackinaw to Fond du Lac of Lake Superior, there was no music so sweet to the ears of the inhabitants, as the enlivening boat song of the merry French "voyageurs," as they came from the direction of Quebec and Montreal each spring of the year—rapidly looming up from the bosom of the calm lake, laden with the articles so dearly valued among the wild hunters. They recognized in these yearly visits the "rays of the fire of their great French father," which he bade them to "look for each morning (spring) towards the rising of the sun."
No strangers were more welcome to the Ojibways, and warm were the shaking of hands and embraces on these occasions between the dusky son of the forest, and the polite and warm-hearted Frank. The dark-eyed damsels, though they stood bashfully in the rear of those who thronged the beach to welcome the new-comers, yet with their faces partly hidden they darted glances of welcome, and waited in the wigwams impatiently for their white sweethearts to come in the darkness and silence of night, to present the trinkets which they had brought all the way from Quebec, to adorn their persons and please their fancy.
After the Ojibways became possessed with fire-arms and ammunition, the arrival of a French "Bourgeois" with the flag of France flying at the stern of his canoe, was saluted with a volley of musketry, and in turn, when any chief approached the "posts" or "forts" accompanied with the same ensign, discharges of cannons were fired in his honor by the French. Thus, interchanges of good-will and polite attention were continually kept up between them.
The French early gained the utmost confidence of the Ojibways, and thereby they became more thoroughly ac-
