Heat haze of Indian summer trembled over the purple hills.  Below, the
river quivered like quicksilver.  In the air was the nutty odor of dried
grasses, the clear tang of coming frosts crystal to the taste as water;
and if one listened, almost listened to the silence, one could hear above
the lapping of the tide the far echo of the cataract.  To Cartier the
scene might have been the airy fabric of some dream world; but out of
dreams of earth's high heroes are empires made.


But the Indians had told of that other kingdom, Hochelaga.  Hither
Cartier had determined to go, when three Indians dressed as devils--faces
black as coals, heads in masks, brows adorned with elk horns--came
gyrating and howling out of the woods on the mountain side, making wild
signals to the white men encamped on the St. Charles.  Cartier's
interpreters told him this was warning from the Indian god not to ascend
the river.  The god said Hochelaga was a realm of snow, where all white
men would perish.  It was a trick to keep the white men's trade for
themselves.

Cartier laughed.

"Tell them their god is an old fool," he said.  "Christ is to be our
guide."

The Indians wanted to know if Cartier had spoken to his God about it.

"No," answered Cartier.  Then, not to be floored, he added, "but my
priest has."

{15} With three cheers, fifty young gentlemen sheered out on September 19
from the St. Charles on the _Emerillon_ to accompany Cartier to Hochelaga.

[Illustration: ANCIENT HOCHELAGA.  (From Ramusio)]

Beyond Quebec the St. Lawrence widened like a lake.  September frosts had
painted the maples in flame.  Song birds, the glory of the St. Lawrence
valley, were no longer to be heard, but the waters literally swarmed with
duck and the forests were alive with partridge.  Where to-day nestle
church spires and whitewashed hamlets were the birch wigwams and night
camp fires of Indian hunters.  Wherever Cartier went ashore, Indians
rushed knee-deep to carry him from the river; and one old chief at
Richelieu signified his pleasure by presenting the whites with two Indian
children.  Zigzagging leisurely, now along the north shore, now along the
south, pausing to hunt, pausing to explore, pausing to powwow with the
Indians, the adventurers came, on September 28, to the reedy shallows and
breeding grounds of wild fowl at Lake St. Peter.  Here they were so close
ashore the _Emerillon_ caught her keel in the weeds, and the explorers
left her aground under guard and went forward in rowboats.

{16} "Was this the way to Hochelaga?" the rowers asked Indians paddling
past.

"Yes, three more sleeps," the Indians answered by the sign of putting the
face with closed eyes three times against their hand; "three more nights
would bring Cartier to Hochelaga"; and on the night of the 2d of October
the rowboats, stopped by the rapids, pulled ashore at Hochelaga amid a
concourse of a thousand amazed savages.

It was too late to follow the trail through the darkening forest to the
Indian village.  Cartier placed the soldiers in their burnished armor on
guard and spent the night watching the council fires gleam from the
mountain.  And did some soldier standing sentry, watching the dark shadow
of the hill creep longer as the sun went down, cry out, "Mont Royal," so
that the place came to be known as Montreal?

At peep of dawn, while the mist is still smoking up from the river,
Cartier marshals twenty seamen with officers in military line, and, to
the call of trumpet, marches along the forest trail behind Indian guides
for the tribal fort.  Following the river, knee-deep in grass, the French
ascend the hill now known as Notre Dame Street, disappear in the hollow
where flows a stream,--modern Craig Street,--then climb steeply through
the forests to the plain now known as the great thoroughfare of
Sherbrooke Street.  Halfway up they come on open fields of maize or
Indian corn.  Here messengers welcome them forward, women singing,
tom-tom beating, urchins stealing fearful glances through the woods.  The
trail ends at a fort with triple palisades of high trees, walls separated
by ditches and roofed for defense, with one carefully guarded narrow
gate.  Inside are fifty large wigwams, the oblong bark houses of the
Huron-Iroquois, each fifty feet long, with the public square in the
center, or what we would call the courtyard.

It needs no trick of fancy to call up the scene--the winding of the
trumpet through the forest silence, the amazement of the Indian drummers,
the arrested frenzy of the dancers, the sunrise turning burnished armor
to fire, the clanking of swords, {17} the wheeling of the soldiers as
they fall in place, helmets doffed, round the council fire!  Women swarm
from the long houses.  Children come running with mats for seats.
Bedridden, blind, maimed are carried on litters, if only they may touch
the garments of these wonderful beings.  One old chief with skin like
crinkled leather and body gnarled with woes of a hundred years throws his
most precious possession, a headdress, at Cartier's feet.

Poor Cartier is perplexed.  He can but read aloud from the Gospel of St.
John and pray Christ heal these supplicants.  Then he showers presents on
the Indians, gleeful as children--knives and hatchets and beads and tin
mirrors and little images and a crucifix, which he teaches them to kiss.
Again the silver trumpet peals through the aisled woods.  Again the
swords clank, and the adventurers take their way up the mountain--a Mont
Royal, says Cartier.