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

20 LA SALLE AND THE SULPITIANS. [1669.to sleep without further trouble ; but if it rains, youmust peel bark from the trees, and make a shed byAs for your food, itlaying it on a frame of sticks.is enough to make you burn all the cookery booksthat ever were written ; for in the woods of Canadaone finds means to live well without bread, wine,salt, pepper, or spice. The ordinary food is Indiancorn, or Turkey wheat as they call it in France,which is crushed between two stones and boiled,seasoning it with meat or fish, when you can getthem. This sort of life seemed so strange to us thatwe all felt the effects of it; and before we were ahundred leagues from Montreal, not one of us wasfree from some malady or other. At last, after allour misery, on the second of August, we discoveredLake Ontario, like a great sea with no landbeyondit."Thirty-five days after leaving La Chine, theyreached Irondequoit Bay, on the south side of thelake. Here they were met by a number of SenecaIndians, who professed friendship and invited themto their villages, fifteen or twenty miles distant. Asthis was on their way to the upper waters of theOhio, and as they hoped to find guides at the villagesto conduct them, they accepted the invitation.Dollier, with most of the men, remained to guardthe canoes; while La Salle, with Galine'e and eightother Frenchmen, accompanied by a troop of Indians,set out on the morning of the twelfth, and reachedthe principal village before evening. It stood on a