CHAPTER XIV.
1615, 1616.
THE GREAT WAR PARTY.
The lot of the favored guest of an Indian camp or village is idleness
without repose, for he is never left alone, with the repletion of
incessant and inevitable feasts. Tired of this inane routine, Champlain,
with some of his Frenchmen, set forth on a tour of observation.
Journeying at their ease by the Indian trails, they visited, in three
days, five palisaded villages. The country delighted them, with its
meadows, its deep woods, its pine and cedar thickets, full of hares and
partridges, its wild grapes and plums, cherries, crab-apples, nuts, and
raspberries. It was the seventeenth of August when they reached the
Huron metropolis, Cahiague, in the modern township of Orillia, three
leagues west of the river Severn, by which Lake Simcoe pours its waters
into the bay of Matchedash. A shrill clamor of rejoicing, the fixed
stare of wondering squaws, and the screaming flight of terrified
children hailed the arrival of Champlain. By his estimate, the place
contained two hundred lodges; but they must have been relatively small,
since, had they been of the enormous capacity sometimes found in these
structures, Cahiague alone would have held the whole Huron population.
Here was the chief rendezvous, and the town swarmed with gathering
warriors.
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