The Rideau River enters from the south at Ottawa, making the route by which the Rideau Canal goes over to Lake Ontario at Kingston. The Gatineau River also flows in at Ottawa, being of great volume, over four hundred miles long, and a prolific timber producer. In the villages around Montreal all the saints in the calendar are named, so that, starting on an exploration of Ottawa River, the route goes by St. Martin, St. Jean, St. Rose, St. Therese, St. Jerome, St. Lin, St. Eustache, St. Augustine, St. Scholastique, St. Hermes, St. Phillippe, and many more. But when the great religious city is left behind the saints cease to appear, and everything in the Ottawa valley above is generally otherwise named. This valley is usually a broad and level intervale, with only an occasional rocky buttress pressing upon the river. At one of these passes, in 1660, a handful of valiant men held the stockade at Carillon, the foot of Long Sault rapids, sacrificing their lives to save the early colony from the Indians, the place being known as the "French Canadian Thermopylæ." The full force of the Iroquois warriors were in arms up the Ottawa, over a thousand of them, threatening to drive the French out of Montreal. Dollard des Ormeaux and sixteen companions took the sacrament in the little Montreal church, made their wills, and bound themselves by an oath neither to give nor take quarter. A few Algonquins joined them, and going up the river they hastily built a stockaded fort at this pass. Soon the Iroquois canoes came dancing down the rapids, and discovering the fort, they surrounded and attacked it, but were repulsed day after day, until every one of the brave garrison had been killed, when the Iroquois had lost so many of their own warriors that they tired of the fighting, and avoiding Montreal, returned southward to their own country. Some fugitive Indians told the heroic story, which George Murray has woven into his ballad: "Eight days of varied horror passed; what boots it now to tell How the pale tenants of the fort heroically fell? Hunger and thirst and sleeplessness, Death's ghastly aids, at length, Marred and defaced their comely forms, and quelled their giant strength. The end draws nigh--they yearn to die--one glorious rally more, For the dear sake of Ville Marie and all will soon be o'er; Sure of the martyr's golden Crown, they shrink not from the Cross, Life yielded for the land they loved, they scorn to reckon loss."