The progress of Bishop St. Vallier coming down the St. John river was expeditious, the water being then at freshet height. At the mouth of the Madawaska, which he named St. Francois de Sales, he met a small band of savages, who pleaded for a missionary. The day following, May 17th, he came to the Grand Falls, or as he calls it "le grand Sault Saint Jean-Baptiste." His book contains the first published description of this magnificent cataract[4]. The rapidity of the journey is seen in the fact that the bishop and his party slept the next night at the Indian village of Medoctec, "the first fort of Acadia," eighty miles below the Grand Falls. Here they found a hundred savages, who were greatly pleased when informed that the bishop had come for the purpose of establishing a mission for their benefit. This promise was fulfilled soon after by the sending to them the Recollet missionary Simon, of whom we shall hear more ere long. It is evident that the French adventurers the bishop encountered in the course of this wilderness journey led a pretty lawless life, for he observed in his narrative: "It is to be wished that the French who have their habitations along this route, were so correct in their habits as to lead the poor savages by their example to embrace Christianity, but we must hope that in the course of time the reformation of the one may bring about the conversion of the other." [4] "Nous vimes l'endroit qu'on appelle le grand Sault Saint Jean-Baptiste, ou la riviere de Saint Jean faisant du haut d'un rocher fort eleve une terrible cascade dans un abime, forme un brouillard qui derobe l'eau a la veue, et fait un bruit qui avertit de loin les navigateurs de descendre de leurs canots." Medoctec was undoubtedly the principal Indian village on the St. John at this time; it was situated on the right bank of the river, eight miles below the Town of Woodstock. Here the Maliseets had a palisaded fort and large cabin, similar to that described by Lescarbot at the village Ouigoudy on Navy Island, where de Monts was welcomed by Chkoudun in 1604. The only other fortification constructed by the Indians on the St. John river, so far as known, was that at the mouth of the Nerepis, at Woodman's Point, called by Villebon, in 1697, "Fort des Sauvages de Nerepisse." It was evidently merely a palisaded enclosure, and on Southack's map of that period is marked "Wooden Fort." Hitherto the Indians of Acadia had lived peaceably with the whites, but the closing years of the seventeenth century were destined to witness a sad transformation. CHAPTER V. KING WILLIAM'S WAR.