last stages of starvation. The young Ojibways filled with compassion, carefully conveyed them to their village, where, being nourished with great kindness, their lives were preserved.
These two white men had started from Quebec during the summer with a supply of goods, to go and find the Ojibways who every year had brought rich packs of beaver to the sea-coast, notwithstanding that their road was barred by numerous parties of the watchful and jealous Iroquois. Coasting slowly up the southern shores of the Great Lake late in the fall, they had been driven by the ice on to the unfrequented island, and not discovering the vicinity of the Indian village, they had been for some time enduring the pangs of hunger. At the time they were found by the young Indians, they had been reduced to the extremity of roasting and eating their woollen cloth and blankets as the last means of sustaining life.
Having come provided with goods they remained in the village during the winter, exchanging their commodities for beaver skins. The ensuing spring a large number of the Ojibways accompanied them on their return home.
From close inquiry, and judging from events which are said to have occurred about this period of time, I am disposed to believe that this first visit by the whites took place about two hundred years ago. It is, at any rate, certain that it happened a few years prior to the visit of the "Black gowns" mentioned in Bancroft's History, and it is one hundred and eighty-four years since this well-authenticated occurrence.
If thorough inquiry were to be made, it would be found that the idea which is now generally believed, that the pious missionaries of those olden times, were the first pioneers into the Indian country about the great chain of Lakes, and Upper Mississippi, and were only followed closely by the traders, is a mistaken one. The adventur-
