La Potherie enters into some detail with respect to Champlain's two first forays against the Iroquois, when he approached them by the Richelieu River, in company with the Algonquins and Montagnets; but he makes no mention of the last, and much the most important one, in which the Hurons were his allies. Cadwallader Colden, in his History of the Five Nations of Canada, is equally silent about the last expedition, though he too mentions the two former ones. The Abbé Raynal, Jeffrey, and Wm. Smith follow the same course, mentioning only the two earlier expeditions. Charlevoix speaks of it, and comments severely upon the policy of the undertaking itself, and upon the manner in which it was carried out; but he gives no indication of the direction followed, and merely says that having collected their forces amongst the Hurons, they marched against the enemy. In this he is followed by many later writers, as Bidaud, Boyd, W. H. Smith, and Warburton, most of whom even leave it in doubt as to where the expedition rendezvoused. As to the rest of the historians, the more they enter into particulars, the more they go astray. Garneau places Cahiagué on Lake Ontario, and applies Champlain's name of Mer Douce to that lake, instead of to Lake Huron; and he says that they had only to cross the St. Lawrence in latitude 43° in order to reach the enemy. It would not be easy to see what the latitude has got to do with the matter, as Ontario lies, through its whole length, almost in the direction of a parallel of latitude, but altogether to the north of 43°. The fact is that Champlain, who never saw anything of the lake except its outlet into the St. Lawrence, places that in latitude 43°-in which he is mistaken; but the use of introducing the latitude is obvious in his case, but quite purposeless in Garneau, even if it were correct, as it would not at all assist in fixing the locality. Moreover, Garneau makes Champlain spend the winter south of Lake Ontario, amongst the Neuters; whilst we know that he never visited the Neuters at all, and that they did not live south of Lake Ontario, but in the western peninsula of Canada, having only one or two outlying villages across the Niagara river. Roger makes Champlain find the Iroquois on Lake Huron, and says that he returned to Quebec by way of Lake Ontario. Miss Roy says he collected his allies somewhere near Green Bay, on Lake Michigan, and supposes that the Iroquois fort, which he attacked, was on the Georgian Bay. McMullen makes Cahiagué at the extremity of Lake Huron, and says that they proceeded thence through Lake St. Clair, and attacked the Iroquois near where Detroit now stands. Murray, in his "British North America," introduces the most beautiful confusion. He calls the allies Algonquins, and not Hurons; and after giving a very detailed account of their collecting at Cahiagué, and their proceedings there, he makes them go down a chain of small lakes, not to Lake Ontario, but to Lake Huron; and after quitting Lake Huron, he says that they struck into the interior to a lake, which he supposes to be Lake Georgeevidently mixing this expedition up with that six years before in 1609, in which they did defeat the Iroquois on Lake George, having reached it by Lake Champlain. But the most astonishing perversion of the story occurs in a state paper, of which we have a copy in our own MS. collection. It is a Mémoire, prepared by the Marquis of Dénonville, Governor General of Canada, and signed by Louis XIV. himself, and countersigned by Colbert. It bears date May 16, 1688, and its object is to shew the prior claim of France to the whole country of the great lakes. After setting forth Champlain's previous discoveries, it proceeds thus: "Et en l'année 1611 et 1612, il monta par la grande rivière jusqu'au lac Huron, qu'on appelle la Mer Douce; de là il fut à la nation du Petun, puis à la nation Neutre, et à celle des Mascoutins, qui demeuraient alors vers l'endroit qu'on appelle Sakiman. De cet endroit il alla vers (avec) les sauvages Algonquins et Hurons, en guerre contre les Iroquois. Il passa par des lieux qu'il a décrits lui-même dans son livre, qui ne sont autres que le Détroit, et le lac Erié." And later on in the same document, it is said that Joliet and Marquet had taken formal possession of Lake Erie, "pour renouveller les prises de possession du Sr. de Champlain en 1612." Now, if one may be allowed to contradict such great persons as Louis XIV and Colbert, I should say that they can either never have read Champlain, or they must have read him very carelessly, for there is hardly a statement in the passage quoted which is not incorrect. In 1611 Champlain sailed for Europe, about two months after he broke up his winter quarters at Quebec, and never ascended the river higher than Montreal; and in 1612 he never was in Canada at all. But even if we amend the date to 1615, the details are equally untrue. He did certainly (after his return from the Iroquois) visit the Petuns during the winter, who lived in the northern parts of the present counties of Grey and Bruce, and he mentions the Neuters as living further south, but he expressly says that he was dissuaded from visiting them. As to the Mascoutins, whom he had heard of under their Huron name of Asistagueronon or Nation du feu, they lived on Lake Michigan, of which he knew so little, that in his map, published seventeen years later, he makes it stretch away to the north, instead of to the south, of Lake Huron. Neither did he ever see Detroit or Lake Erie, and it is doubtful if he knew of the existence of the latter even by report, for in his map in 1632, he merely connects Lakes Huron and Ontario by a river. The first certain * In the note on the ancient geography of Canada, in the appendix to the Rev. P. Martin's translation of Bressani's Relation (Montreal, 1852), Champlain is quoted as an authority for the name Lac Derić. If the name occurs in his book, it has escaped me; it certainly is not to be found in his map. I suspect the compilers of that useful appendix have obtained the name, with that spelling, from the map of 1613, which professes to be recuillie et dressée sur diverses relations modernes. In the configuration of the country it is an exact copy of Champlain's map, but it contains some half a dozen new names, indicating increased geographical knowledge, and amongst them Lac Derié under the river which occupies its place. It must be from this map also, and not from Champlain's as quoted, that the compilers obtained the name Kaoutotun for the great Manitoulin Island. From about 1640 Lake Erie was well known, though lying out of the usual track, and it is not very unfaithfully represented by Sanson in 1657, and by Ducreux in 1660; but there is, in the Parliamentary Library, a map of as late a date as 1661, said to contain les terres nouvellement découvertes suivant les mémoires du P. du Val, in which Lake Erie does not appear even by name; and K account we have of any one having visited the Neuters is the letter of De la Roche Daillon, in 1626, published in Sagard's History. As to Lake Eric, it appears doubtful whether even in 1640 Le Jeune knew of its existence, for he gives a description of the whole lake region, including Lake Superior, without any allusion to it. The first clear account which we have of it is in Lalemant's Relation of 1641, and the first journey through it, of which I have found any mention, is that of two missionaries named Dolier and Galinée, as late as 1670. When I was examining into the manner in which the probability of ancient Roman history is tested by its internal evidences, I could not help being struck with the uncertainty which would rest upon this accident in our own early annals, if Champlain's original journal had not been preserved. The ominous silence of most of the earlier historians would be held to throw a doubt upon there having ever been any such expedition at all; and the irreconcilable differences in all those who enter into any detail, would appear incompatible with there having been any authentic record to refer to. The special object which the French authorities had in putting forth their version, would appear very suspicious, and would be held, and very justly so, to indicate that the story had been got up to meet the requirements of their policy. And Brodhead's narrative, the only true one, from its giving minute particulars not mentioned e'sewhere, and from its divergence from all other accounts, would probably have been looked upon as a pure fabrication of a later age. Hennepin, in 1682, says that its western extension (which existed only in imagination) had never been explored. I will take this opportunity of correcting another error in the appendix to Martin's Bressani. Lacus Ouentaronius is given as one of the names of Ontario on the authority of Ducreux; but Ducreux, in the body of his map, calls it Laens Ontarins, and the Ouentaronius in the enlarged "Chorographia Region is Huronum," in the margin, is evidently Lake Simcoe, which was known by that name (Wentaronk) down to the time of Governor Simcoe. NOTE. It should have been stated in the text that the details of Champlain's expedition are given in the Abbé Ferland's Cours d'Histoire, with the accuracy which distinguishes every thing in that admirable work; but I think that he is mistaken in adopting Dr. O'Callaghan's identification of the locality of the Iroquois fort. PAPER V.-LIST OF COLEOPTERA AND DIPTERA BY WILLIAM COUPER, Cor. Mem. Ent. Soc., Philad.; Nat. Hist. Soc., Montreal; Assistant Sec. Lit. & Hist. Soc., Quebec. [Presented to the Society 6th January, 1864.] COLEOPTERA. * THE species with an occur also in the vicinity of Toronto, Upper Canada. Those described under genera, without specific names, do not appear in Melsheimer's or LeConte's catalogues, and are, therefore, supposed to be either obscure forms described by old authors or at present unknown to American entomologists. The species to which n. s. is attached are new. CICINDELA Linn. longilabris Say. albilabris Kirby. Taken at Lorette. June. *sexguttata Fabr. violacea Fabr. In the woods. July. *vulgaris Say. obliquata Dej. tranquebarica Herbst. Common. *duodecimguttata Dej. proteus Kirby. Quebec. August. Sandy roads. hirticollis Say. albohirta Dej. unita Kollar. gravida Lec. Common on sandy roads in August. LORICERA Latr. *pilicornis Latr. Carab. pilicornis Fabr. In woods. July. Rare. NEBRIA Latr. castenipes Lec. Helobia cast. Kirby. Under stones pear wood land brooks. June and July. |