Along the entire river front of Montreal camp-fires faded as the amphitheatre of night gradually dissolved around them.

Canoes lay beached in one long row as if a shoal of huge fish had come to land. The lodges made a new street along Montreal wharf. Oblong figures of Indian women moved from shadow to shine, and children stole out to caper beside kettles where they could see their breakfasts steaming. Here and there light fell upon a tranquil mummy less than a metre in length, standing propped against a lodge side, and blinking stoical eyes in its brown flat face as only a bark-encased Indian baby could blink; or it slept undisturbed by the noise of the awakening camp, looking a mummy indeed.

The savage of the New World carried his family with him on every peaceable journey; sometimes to starve for weeks when the winter hunting proved bad. It was only when he went to war that he denied himself all squaw service.

The annual beaver fair was usually held in midsummer, but this year the tribes of the upper lakes had not descended with their furs to Montreal until September. These precious skins, taken out of the canoes, were stored within the lodges.

Every male of the camp was already greasing, painting, and feathering himself for the grand council, which always preceded a beaver fair. Hurons, Ottawas, Crees, Nipissings, Ojibwas, Pottawatamies, each jealous for his tribe, completed a process begun the night before, and put on what might be called his court dress. In some cases this was no dress at all, except a suit of tattooing, or a fine coat of ochre streaked with white clay or soot. The juice of berries heightened nature in their faces. But there were grand barbarians who laid out robes of beaver skin, ample, and marked inside with strange figures or porcupine quill embroidery. The heads swarming in this vast and dusky dressing-room were some of them shaven bare except the scalp lock, some bristling in a ridge across the top, while others carried the natural coarse growth tightly braided down one side, with the opposite half flowing loose.

Montreal behind its palisades made a dim background to all this early illumination,—few domestic candles shining through windows or glancing about the HÔtel Dieu as the nuns began their morning devotions. Mount Royal now flickered a high shadow, and now massed inertly against stars; but the river, breathing forever like some colossal creature, reflected all the camp-fires in its moving scales.

The guns of the fort had fired a salute to Indian guests on their arrival the evening before. But at sunrise repeated cannonading, a prolonged roll of drums, and rounds of musketry announced that the governor-general’s fleet was in sight.

Montreal flocked to the wharf where already the savages were arrayed in solemn ranks. Marching out of the fortress with martial music, past the HÔtel Dieu to the landing-place where Frontenac must step from his boat, came the remnant of the Carignan regiment. Even the Sulpitian brotherhood, whose rights as seigniors of Montreal island this governor had at one time slighted, appeared to do him honor. And gentle nuns of St. Joseph were seen in the general outpour of inhabitants.

This governor-general, with all his faults, had a large and manly way of meeting colonial dangers, and was always a prop under the fainting heart of New France.

His boats made that display upon the St. Lawrence which it was his policy and inclination to make before Indians. Officers in white and gold, and young nobles of France, powdered, and flashing in the colors of Louis’ magnificent reign, crowded his own vessel,—young men who had ventured out to Quebec because it was the fashion at court to be skilled in colonial matters, and now followed Frontenac as far as Montreal to amuse themselves with the annual beaver fair. The flag of France, set with its lily-like symbol, waved over their heads its white reply to its twin signal on the fort.

Frontenac stood at the boat’s prow, his rich cloak thrown back, and his head bared to the morning river breath and the people’s shouts. Being colonial king pleased this soldier, tired of European camps and the full blaze of royalty, where his poverty put him to the disadvantage of a singed moth.

He came blandly gliding to the wharf, Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac, and Baron of Palluau, and the only governor of New France who ever handled the arrogant Five Nations of the Iroquois like a strong father,[1]—a man who would champion the rights of his meanest colonist, and at the same time quarrel with his lieutenant in power to his last breath.

Merchants of Quebec followed him with boat-loads of Indian supplies. Even Acadia had sent men to this voyage, for the Baron de Saint-Castin appeared in the fleet, with his young Indian Baroness. It is told of Saint-Castin that he had kept a harem in his sylvan principality of Pentegoet; but being a man of conscience, he confessed and reformed. It is also told of him that he never kept a harem or otherwise lapsed into the barbarisms of the Penobscots, among whom he carried missionaries and over whom he was a great lord. Type of the Frenchman of his day, he came to New France a lad in the Carignan regiment, amassed fortunes in the fur trade, and holding his own important place in the colony, goaded like a thorn the rival colony of New England along his borders.

But most conspicuous to the eyes of Montreal were two men standing at Frontenac’s right hand, a Norman and an Italian. Both were tall, the Italian being of deeper colors and more generous materials. His large features were clothed in warm brown skin. Rings of black hair thick as a fleece were cut short above his military collar. His fearless, kindly eyes received impressions from every aspect of the New World. There dwelt in Henri de Tonty the power to make men love him at sight,—savages as well as Europeans. He wore the dress of a French lieutenant of infantry, and looked less than thirty years old, having entered the service of France in his early youth.

The other man, Robert Cavelier,—called La Salle from an estate he had once owned in France,—explorer, and seignior of Fort Frontenac and adjacent grants on the north shore of Lake Ontario, was at that time in the prime of his power. He was returning from France, with the king’s permission to work out all his gigantic enterprises, with funds for the purpose, and one of the most promising young military men in Europe as his lieutenant.

Montreal merchants on the wharf singled out La Salle with jealous eye, which saw in the drooping point and flaring base of his nose an endless smile of scorn. He was a man who had only to use his monopolies to become enormously rich, cutting off the trade of the lakes from Montreal. That he was above gain, except as he could use it for hewing his ambitious road into the wilderness, they did not believe. The merchants of Montreal readily translated the shyness and self-restraint of his solitary nature into the arrogance of a recently ennobled and successful man.

La Salle had a spare face, with long oval cheeks, curving well inward beside the round of his sensitive prominent chin. Gray and olive tones still further cooled the natural pallor of his skin and made ashen brown the hair which he wore flowing.

The plainness of an explorer and the elegance of a man exact in all his habits distinguished La Salle’s dress against that background of brilliant courtiers.

He moved ashore with Frontenac, who saluted benignly both the array of red allies and the inhabitants of this second town in the province.

The sub-governor stepped out to escort the governor-general to the fort, bells rang, cannon still boomed, martial music pierced the heart with its thrill, and the Carignan squad wheeled in behind Frontenac’s moving train.

“Sieur de la Salle! Sieur de la Salle!” a little girl called, breaking away from the Sisters of St. Joseph, whose convent robes had enclosed her like palisades, “take me also in the procession!”

This demand granted itself, so nimbly did she escape a nun’s ineffectual grasp and spring between Tonty and La Salle.

Frontenac himself had turned at the shrill outcry. He laughed when he saw the wilful young creature taking the explorer by the wrist and falling into step so close to his own person.

A pursuing nun, unwilling to interrupt the governors train, hovered along its progress, making anxious signs to her charge, until she received an assuring gesture from La Salle. She then went back dissatisfied but relieved of responsibility; and the child, with a proud fling of her person, marched on toward the fort.