Louis led from Montreal through one thousand
two hundred leagues of journey by water and land to the mouth of the Miami
River and back. There are no hilarious songs in this prelude such as were
heard from the crests of the Blue Ridge when Spotswood's horsemen came up
from the other side. It has to me the atmosphere and movement of some
Greek tragedy, though one writer likens it to mediaval mummery. Perhaps it
is only a knowledge of its import and the end that makes it sombre and
grave despite the beautiful setting to this prelude which one may read to-
day in the French archives. So full of portent and color it is that I
wonder no one has woven its incidents, slight as they are, into French
literature or into that of America.
"I left Lachine on the 15th of June," begins Celoron's journal, [Footnote:
Margry, 6:666.] now in the Departement de la Marine, in Paris, "with a
detachment formed of a captain, eight subaltern officers, six cadets, an
armorer, twenty men of the troops, one hundred and eighty Canadians, and
nearly thirty savages--equal number of Iroquois and Abenakes.
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