The things we do!

There is a stone erected by the local historical
society to mark the spot. When I saw the bronze tablet the inscription was
almost illegible, covered, as it was, with ice and the snow that was at
that very hour falling upon it.
There, began the felling and hewing of trees that were to touch the
farther shores of Michigan. The supplies brought out from Paris had been
lost by the wreck of La Salle's smaller vessel on the way up Ontario, but
enough was saved, or brought by La Salle on his return from Fort
Frontenac, to give this sixty-ton vessel full equipment, for in the spring
she was launched. The "friar pronounced his blessing on her; the assembled
company sang _Te Deum_; cannon were fired; and French and Indians ...
shouted and yelped in chorus as she glided into Niagara." She carried five
cannon and on her prow was carved such a "portentous monster" as doubtless
is to be found among the grotesques of Notre Dame--a griffin (that is, a
beast with the body of a lion and the head, beak, and pinions of a bird),
in honor of the armorial bearings of Count Frontenac.


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