The wondering captives, when they fairly comprehended that they were saved from cruel torture and death, were surprised and delighted beyond measure. Then one of the captive Mohawks, of great size and of matchless symmetry of form, who was evidently a war chief, arose and said to the Governor Montmagny :

My body is degiven me my life. All my country

“Onnontio, I am saved from the fire. livered from death. Onnontio, you have I thank you for it. I will never forget it. will be grateful to you. The earth will be bright, the river calm and smooth; there will be peace and friendship be.tween us. The shadow is before my eyes no longer. The spirits of my ancestors slain by the Algonquins have disappeared. Onnontio, you are good; we are bad. But our anger is gone. I have no heart but for peace and rejoicing."

As he said this he began to dance, holding his hands upraised as if apostrophizing the sun. Suddenly he snatched a hatchet, brandished it for a moment like a mad man, then flung it into the fire saying as he did so :

"Thus I throw down my anger; thus I cast away the weapons of blood. Farewell war. Now, Onnontio, I am your friend forever."

Onnontio means in the Indian tongue "Great Mountain." It is a literal translation of Montmagny's name. It was ever after the Iroquois name for the governors of Canada, as Corlear was for the Governors of New York. Corlear was the Indian name for Arendt van Curler, first superintendent of the "colonie of Rensselaerswick," who was a great favorite of the Mohawks.

The captive Iroquois were well treated by the French

and one of them sent home to their country on the Mohawk, under a promise of making negotiations for peace with his people, and the other kept as a hostage. The efforts of the captive chief who returned to the Mohawks were successful. In a short time he reappeared at Three Rivers with ambassadors of peace from the Mohawk cantons. To the great joy of the French he brought with him Couture, who had become a savage in dress and appearance. After a great deal of feasting, speech-making and belt-giving, peace was concluded, and order and quiet once more reigned for a brief period in the wilderness.

But ambassadors from the French and Algonquins must be sent from Canada to the Mohawk towns, with gifts and presents to ratify the treaty. No one among the French was so well suited for this office as Isaac Jogues. His, too, was a double errand, for he had already been ordered by his superior to found a new mission among the Mohawks. It was named prophetically, in advance, "The Mission of the Martyrs." At the first .thought of returning to the Mohawks, Jogues recoiled with horror. But it was only a

momentary pang. The path of duty seemed clear to him, and, thankful that he was found worthy to suffer for the saving of souls, he prepared to depart.

On the 16th of May, 1646, Father Jogues set out from Three Rivers with Sieur Bourdon, engineer to the Governor, two Algonquin ambassadors, and four Mohawks as guides. On his way he passed over the well remembered scenes of his former sufferings upon the River Richelieu and Lake Champlain. He reached the foot of Lake George on the eve of Corpus Christi, which is the feast of the Blessed Body of Jesus. He named the lake, in honor of the day, “The

Lake of the Blessed Sacrament." For more than a hundred years afterward this lake bore no other name. When he visited the lake before, as a poor, suffering, bleeding prisoner, it was clad in the dreamy splendors of the early autumn. Now its banks were robed in the wild exuberance of leafy June.

When Sir William Johnson began his military operations at the head of the lake in the summer of 1755, he changed its name to Lake George in honor of England's Hanoverian king. "Better," says an eminent historian, "had it been called Lake Jogues in honor of its gentle discoverer."

From Lake St. Sacrament, Jogues proceeded on his way to the Mohawk country, and having accomplished his political mission, returned to Canada.

Thus ended the first French and Indian war, which I shall call the war of 1642.

IX.

THE MISSION OF THE MARTYRS.

But the work of Father Jogues was only half done. Again, in month of September he set out for the Mohawk country. On his way he again passed over the shining waters of Lake St. Sacrament. Now it had doffed its summer dress, aud donned again the gold and crimson glories of the autumn forests. This time he went in his true character, a minister of the gospel. But he had a strong presentiment that his life was near its end. He wrote to a friend "I shall go and shall not return." His forebodings were verified. While there in July he had left a small box containing a few necessary articles in anticipation of an

early return. The superstitious savages were confident that famine, pestilence, or some evil spirit or other was shut up in the box, which would in time come forth and devastate their country. To confirm their suspicions, that very summer there was much sickness in their castles, and when the harvest came in the autumn they found that the caterpillars had eaten their corn. The Christian missionary was held responsible for all this, and was therefore doomed to die.

He arrived at their village of Cach-na-wa-ga, on the bank of the Mohawk, on the 17th of October, and was saluted with blows. On the evening of the 18th, he was invited to sup in the wigwam of a chief. He accepted the invitation, and on entering the hut he was struck on the head with a tomahawk by a savage who was concealed within the door. They cut off his head, and in the morning displayed it upon one of the palisades that surrounded the village. His body they threw into the Mohawk.

Thus died Father Isaac Jogues, the discoverer of Lake George, at his Mission of the Martyrs, St. Mary of the Mohawks, in the fortieth year of his age.* He was but an humble, self-sacrificing missionary of the Cross, yet his was "One of the few, the immortal names,

That were not born to die."

For a full account of the martyrdom of Father Jogues, see Parkman's Jesuits in North America, to which work I am indebted for many of the incidents above related. Also see Abridged Relations of Father Bressany, published in Montreal in 1852, which contains a portrait of Father Jogues.

Among the softer and more gentle aspects of the Wilderness, are its numberless lakes, which, like its mountain meadows, are scattered all over its surface, sleeping in quiet beauty in all its valleys.

A boundless stretch of forest is grand, but when its somber shades are broken by the silver waters of a lake, its grandeur at once softens into the beautiful.

In the Old World, the associations of centuries of human experience cluster around each lake and river, and they are linked to the past by a thousand pleasing or painful memories. But here in this primeval wilderness, many of them are as new and fresh creations, so far as civilized man is concerned, as they were when left by the receding waters of the Primeval Ocean. No human blood or tears have ever been mingled with their waters. The wild fowl builds her nest near them, and there hatches her young brood; the grey wolf comes tripping down the banks to drink; the timid deer steps in to crop his juicy food; the eagle rears her young on some steep jutting crag, or towering topblasted tree; the sleek otter slides in for his daily store of fish, and the panther's scream echoes around their lonely