"
While through tribulations like these Le Caron made his way towards the
scene of his apostleship, Champlain was following on his track. With two
canoes, ten Indians, Etienne Brule his interpreter, and another
Frenchman, he pushed up the Ottawa till he reached the Algonquin
villages which had formed the term of his former journeying. He passed
the two lakes of the Allumettes; and now, for twenty miles, the river
stretched before him, straight as the bee can fly, deep, narrow, and
black, between its mountain shores. He passed the rapids of the Joachims
and the Caribou, the Rocher Capitamne, and the Deux Rivieres, and
reached at length the trihutary waters of the Mattawan. He turned to the
left, ascended this little stream forty miles or more, and, crossing a
portage track, well trodden, reached the margin of Lake Nipissing. The
canoes were launched again, and glided by leafy shores and verdant
islands till at length appeared signs of human life and clusters of bark
lodges, half hidden in the vastness of the woods. It was the village of
an Algonquin band, called the Nipissings,--a race so beset with
spirits, infested by demons, and abounding in magicians, that the
Jesuits afterwards stigmatized them as "the Sorcerers." In this
questionable company Champlain spent two days, feasted on fish, deer,
and bears.
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