I Turned Over In My Mind What Could Have Possibly Given Occasion For This, When The Great Chief & Captain Of

The savages came to tell me that some young men of the band, irritated by the recollection of that which

The English had said to them, that my brother, des Groseilliers, was dead, that I was a prisoner, & that they were come to make all the other Frenchmen perish, as well as some reports of cannon that they had fired with ball in the wood the day that I was arrived, had thus thrown away this tobacco which had come from the English by mistake, not wishing to smoke any of it. He assured me also that the young men had wicked designs upon the English; that he had diverted them from it by hindering them from going out of the house. The Governor, who had difficulty in believing that this tobacco thrown upon the sands was the omen of some grievous enterprise, was nevertheless convinced of it by the discourse of the savage. I begged him to come with me into the house, & to go out from it no more, with the other English, for some time; assuring them, nevertheless, that they had nothing to fear, & that all the French & myself would perish rather than suffer that one of them should be in the least insulted. After which I ordered my nephew to make all those savages imbark immediately, so as to continue their journey as far as their own country, which was done. Thus we were delivered from all kinds of apprehension, & free to work at our business.

In the mean while I could not admire enough the constancy of my nephew & of his men in that in which they themselves laboured to dispossess themselves of any but good in favour of the English, their old enemies, for whom they had just pretensions, without having any other assurances of their satisfaction but the confidence that they had in my promises. Besides, I could not prevent myself from showing the pleasure that I experienced in having succeeded in my enterprise, & of seeing that in commencing to give some proofs of my zeal for the service of the English Company I made it profit them by an advantage very considerable; which gave them for the future assurances of my fidelity, & obliged them to have care of my interests in giving me that which belonged to me legitimately, & acquitting me towards my nephew & the other French of that which I had promissed them, & that a long & laborious work had gained for them. After that, that is to say, during the 3 days that we rested in that house, I wished to inform myself exactly, from my nephew, in the presence of the Englishmen, of all that which had passed between them since that I had departed from the country, & know in what manner he had killed two Englishmen there; upon which my nephew began to speak in these words: -

"Some days after your departure, in the year 1683, the 27th of July, the number of reports of cannon-shots that we heard fired on the side of the great river made us believe that they came from some English ship that had arrived.

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