DESCRIPTIONS BY TRAVELLERS AND BY HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL WRITERS.

FATHER CHARLEVOIX-(1721).

Pierre François Xavier Charlevoix was born in 1682, became a Jesuit priest, and in 1720-1722 made a voyage to North America under orders from the King of France. Passing up the St. Lawrence and through the Lakes, he found his way to the Mississippi, and, after encountering many difficulties, finally reached San Domingo, and returned from thence to France. Besides his Journal of Travels, which was written in epistolary form, he wrote a History of New France, which is regarded as high authority. He closed a life devoted to study and travel, on the 18th of February, 1761.

The Journal of his Travels1 abounds in historical, ethnological and topographical information, and he was a close observer of Natural History. His description of this region is brief, and is given in a letter dated at Catarocoui [Kingston] May 14, 1721, in which he says:

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Five or six leagues from la Galette is an island called Toniata, the soil of which appears tolerably fertile, and

(1) An English edition of these Travels, published in 1761, (2 vols., pp. 800) furnishes the extract here given.

(2) Probably the same as that known on modern maps as Grenadier or Barthust Island. The middle part is quite fertile, and well adapted for settlement.

which is about half a league long. An Iroquois called 'The Quaker,' for what reason I know not-a man of excellent good sense, and much devoted to the French—had obtained the right of it from the Count de Frontenac, and he shows his Patent to everybody that desires to see it. He has, however, sold his Lordship for four pots of brandy; but he has reserved the usufruct for his own life, and has got together on it eighteen or twenty families of his own nation. I found him at work in his garden; this is not usual with the Indians, but this person affects to follow all the French manners. He received me very well, and would have regaled me, but the fine weather invited me to pursue my voyage. I took my leave of him, and went to pass the night two leagues from hence, in a very pleasant spot. I had still thirteen leagues to sail before I could reach Catarocoui; the weather was fine, and the night very clear. This prevailed with us to embark at three in the morning. We passed through the middle of a kind of an Archipelago, which they call Mille Iles, (the Thousand Isles,) and I believe there are above five hundred of them. After you

have got from among them, you have only a league and a half to sail to reach Catarocoui. The river is open, and is full half a league wide. You then leave upon the right three great bays, pretty deep, and the fort is built in the third.

Fort Catarocoui was described by Charlevoix as a square, with four bastions, built with stone, and the ground it occupies as a quarter of a league in circuit. The situation was very pleasant, and the view upon the river remarkably fine.

An anonymous folio printed for Thomas Jeffreys in 1760, 1 repeats (page 15) the account given by Charlevoix about the Indian living on Toniata Island, and what is said by him concerning the Thousand Islands.

(1) The Natural and Civil History of the French Dominions in North and South America, etc. London, 1760.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER'S IDEAL "STATION ISLAND."

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(Assumed to be about 1755).

In the third of his series of "Leather-Stocking Tales," as placed by its author, although not in the order of publication, is THE PATHFINDER," a romance by some regarded as the most pleasing of the many that were sketched by the pen of this popular writer. In his youth, James Cooper, (as he was known until a middle name was inserted by a special act of the Legislature of New York, in 1826), had been a Midshipman in the American Navy, and in this capacity was stationed for a time at Oswego, where the first beginning was made in the construction of an American naval armament upon Lake Ontario, under Commodore Woolsey, in the Summer of 1808. Of this period of his life, the author himself says:

"This was pretty early in the present Century, when the navigation was still confined to the employment of a few ships and schooners. Since that day, light may be said to have broken into the wilderness, and the rays of the sun have penetrated to tens of thousands of beautiful valleys and plains, that then lay in 'grateful shade.' Towns have been built along the whole of the extended line of coasts, and the traveller now stops at many places of ten or fifteen, and at one of even fifty thousand inhabitants, where a few huts then marked the sites of future marts."

Amid these familiar scenes, Cooper laid the plan of his romance, and the descriptions of scenery and of natural topography which the book contains, he regards "as nearly accurate as is required by the laws which govern fiction," although these wild solitudes of Lake Ontario as he saw them, are so no longer. The period assigned for the romance, was about the middle of the last Century, while

the English held a military and trading post at Oswego, and the French the region to the north and west of the Lake, extending in a chain of posts from their possessions in Lower Canada to those on the Mississippi. It was not long before the hostilities began that ended in the conquest of the French in Canada, and the full establishment of the English power, and of peace along the whole line of this. memorable Frontier.

We will not attempt to give an outline of the plot of the tale, leaving that to be known by those who would wish the details from the book itself. It is sufficient for our present use, to copy some of the descriptions of scenery of the Thousand Islands,―among the intricate mazes of which the author has placed THE STATION, upon which depends. a part of the plot. It was, indeed, as he represented it, in that day, a place hard to find, the approach being full of difficulties and dangers. The way was known to but a favored few, to whom the secret was in confidence entrusted, and the place is now, like Calypso's favored Isle, an open question for those who choose to explore.

"The Station, as the place was familiarly termed by the soldiers of the 55th, was indeed a spot to raise expectations of enjoyment among those who had been cooped up so long in a vessel of the dimensions of the Scud. None of the islands were high, though all lay at a sufficient elevation above the water to render them perfectly healthy and secure. Each had more or less of wood, and the greater number at that distant day were clothed with the virgin forest. The one selected by the troops for their purpose was small, containing about twenty acres of land, and by some of the accidents of the wilderness, it has been partly stripped of its trees, probably centuries before the period of which we are writing, and a little grassy glade covered.

nearly half its surface. It was the opinion of the officer who had made the selection of this spot for a military post, that a sparkling spring near by had early caught the attention of the Indians, and that they had long frequented this particular place in their hunts, or when fishing for salmon -a circumstance that had kept down the second-growth, and given time for the natural grasses to take root, and to gain dominion over the soil. Let the cause be what it might, the effect was to render this island far more beautiful than most of those around it, and to lend an air of civilization that was then wanting in so much of that vast region of country.

The shores of Station Island were completely fringed with bushes, and great care had been taken to preserve them, as they answered as a screen to conceal the persons and things collected within their circle. Favored by this shelter, as well as of that of several thickets of trees and different coppices, some six or eight low huts had been erected to be used as quarters for the officer and his men, to contain stores, and to serve the purposes of kitchen, hospital, etc. These huts were built of logs, in the usual manner, had been roofed by bark brought from a distance, lest signs of labor should attract attention, and, as they had now been inhabited some months, were as comfortable as dwellings of that description usually ever get to be.

At the eastern extremity of the Island, however, was a small, dense-wooded peninsula, with a thicket of underbrush so thickly matted as nearly to prevent the possibility of seeing across it, so long as the leaves remained on the branches. Near the narrow neck that connected this acre with the rest of the Island, a small block house had been erected with some attention to its means of resistance. The logs were bullet-proof, squared and jointed with a care to leave no defenceless points; the windows were loop-holes; the door massive and small; and the roof, like the rest of the structure, was framed of hewn timber, covered properly with bark to exclude the rain. The lower apartment, as usual, contained stores and provisions; here, indeed, the party kept all their supplies; the second story was intended for a dwelling as well as for a citadel, and a low garret was subdivided into two or three rooms, and could hold the pallets of some ten or fifteen persons. All the arrangements were exceedingly simple and cheap, but they were