* Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et Courcelle, etc. that the lakes might thaw and cut off their retreat. “Ye Mohaukes,” says the old English report of the affair, “were all gone to their Castles with resolution to fight it out against the french, who, being refresht and supplyed with the aforesaid provisions, made a shew of marching towards the Mohaukes Castles, but with faces about, and great sylence and dilligence, return’d towards Cannada.” “Surely,” observes the narrator, “so bould and hardy an attempt hath not hapned in any age.” * The end hardly answered to the beginning. The retreat, which began on Sunday night, was rather precipitate. The Mohawks hovered about their rear, and took a few prisoners; but famine and cold proved more deadly foes, and sixty men perished before they reached the shelter of Fort Ste. Thérèse. On the eighth of March, Courcelle came to the neighboring fort of St. Louis or Chambly. Here he found the Jesuit Albanel acting as chaplain; and, being in great ill humor, he charged him with causing the failure of the expedition by detaining the Algonquin guides. This singular notion took such possession of him, that, when a few days after he met the Jesuit Frémin at Three Rivers, he embraced him ironically, saying, at the same time, “My father, I am the unluckiest gentleman in the world; and you, and the rest of you, are the cause of it.” ** The pious Tracy, and the prudent * A Relation of the Governr. of Cannada, his March with 600 Volunteire into if Territoryes of His Roy all Highnesse the Duke of Yorke in America. See Doc. Hist. N. Y. I. 71. ** Journal des Jésuites, Mars, 1666. . Talon, tried to disarm his suspicions, and with such success that he gave up an intention he had entertained of discarding his Jesuit confessor, and forgot or forgave the imagined wrong. Unfortunate as this expedition was, it produced a strong effect on the Iroquois by convincing them that their forest homes were no safe asylum from French attacks. In May, the Senecas sent an embassy of peace; and the other nations, including the Mohawks, soon followed. Tracy, on his part, sent the Jesuit Bêchefer to learn on the spot the real temper of the savages, and ascertain whether peace could safely be made with them. The Jesuit was scarcely gone when news came that a party of officers hunting near the outlet of Lake Champlain had been set upon by the Mohawks, and that seven of them had been captured or killed. Among the captured was Leroles, a cousin of Tracy, and among the killed was a young gentleman named Chasy, his nephew.