La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

1679.] ST. IGNACE. 158their prayers. The obedient winds were tamed ; andthe " Griffin " plunged on her way through foamingsurges that still grew calmer as she advanced. Nowthe sun shone forth on woody islands, Bois Blancand Mackinaw and the distantManitoulins, — on theforest wastes of Michigan and the vast blue bosom ofthe angry lake ;and now her port was won, and shefound her rest behind the point of St. Ignace ofMichilimackinac, floating in that tranquil cove wherecrystal waters cover but cannot hide the pebblydepths beneath. Before her rose the house andchapel of the Jesuits, enclosed with palisades ; on theright, the Huron village, with its bark cabins andits fence of tall pickets; on the left, the squarecompact houses of the French traders; and, not faroff, the clustered wigwams of an Ottawa village. 1Here was a centre of the Jesuit missions, and acentre of the Indian trade; and here, under theyshadow ofthe cross, was much sharp practice in theservice of Mammon. Keen traders, with or withouta license, and lawless coureurs de bois, whom a fewyears of forest life had weaned from civilization,made St. Ignace their resort; and here there weremany of them when the " Griffin " came. They andtheir employers hated and feared La Salle, who,sustained as he was by the governor, might set atnought the prohibition of the King, debarring himfrom traffic with these tribes. Yet, while plotting1There is a rude plan of the establishment in La Hontan, thoughin several editions its value is destroyed by the reversal of the plate