were obtained from some Iroquois prisoners at Fort Frontenac. The one great gain of the year had been the winning over of the Lake tribes, a result which at once assured the safety of the French traders and missionaries in the West, and prevented that isolation of the colony which would have followed had an alliance been struck between those tribes and the Iroquois. [Footnote 33: _Frontenac et ses Amis_, p. 93.] [Footnote 34: _Comte de Frontenac_, p. 358.] [Footnote 35: Far from yielding to Frontenac's view of the matter, Denonville doggedly adhered to his own opinion that the fort ought to be entirely abandoned; and, when it was found that it had only been partly destroyed, he wrote to the king advising that Frontenac should be ordered to send up three hundred men with instructions to demolish it utterly.] [Footnote 36: Parkman tells the story in his usual brilliant manner in chapter iii. of his _Old Regime in Canada_. Pere Charlevoix gives the facts and adds: "Je l'ai vu en 1721, age de quatre-vingt ans, plein de forces et de sante; toute la colonie rendant hommage a sa vertu et a son merite," vol. ii. p. 111, edition of 1744.] [Footnote 37: _New York Colonial Documents_, p. 464.] [Footnote 38: Perrot and his party, according to Monseignat's narrative, left the end of the Island of Montreal on the 22nd May. The Albany--or more correctly Schenectady party, for they did not venture to attack Albany--returned towards the end of March. Frontenac's message must have been composed some months before Perrot's departure, otherwise he would undoubtedly have mentioned with pride the Schenectady massacre. It was certainly not up to date.] [Footnote 39: "There was little resistance," says Pere Chretien Leclercq, a contemporary writer, "except at one house, where Sieur de Marque Montigny was wounded; but Sieur de Ste. Helene, having come up, all were slaughtered with sword or tomahawk, the Indians sparing no one."--_Premier Etablissement de la Foi._] [Footnote 40: _Documentary History of New York_, vol. ii. pp. 164-9.] [Footnote 41: _New York Colonial Documents_, vol. ix. p. 440. See also Lorin, _Comte de Frontenac_, chap. x.] [Footnote 42: _Comte de Frontenac_, p. 367.] [Footnote 43: Names given by the Indians to the governors of New York and Massachusetts; Corlaer being a corruption of Cuyler, a Dutchman of the early period held in high honour by them, and Kishon signifying "The Fish."] CHAPTER X FRONTENAC DEFENDER OF CANADA