The Jesuit relations contain no account of establishments on the south shore of Lake Erie in the seventeenth century. For many years these wooden records remained an interesting mystery, which I think may possibly be solved by recent documents brought to light in France. We know that La Salle in 1680 returned from the Illinois to Montreal most of the way by land, and it is conjectured that he may have traversed the south shore of Lake Erie; but the passage of a few men hastily through a wilderness did not account for the many marks of axes which we find. The stump of an oak tree was shown me soon after it had been felled in 1838, which stood in the northwestern part of Canfield, Mahoning County, O. It was two feet ten inches in diameter, and, with the exception of the concealed gashes, was quite sound. When about fourteen inches in diameter, this tree had been cut nearly half through; but the scar had healed over so thoroughly that it did not appear externally. I took a section from the outside to the heart, showing both the old and the recent axe marks, which may be seen in the museum of the Western Reserve Historical Society, at Cleveland. Over the old cuts there had grown one hundred and sixty annual layers of solid wood, and the tree had died of age some years before. This would place the cutting between the years 1670 and 1675. The tree stood a few miles south of the great Indian trail leading from the waters of the Mahoning, a branch of the Ohio, to the waters of the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie. In 1848 or 1849, Mr. S. Lapham, of Willoughby, Lake County, Ohio, felled a hickory tree, standing a short distance from the ridge, along which was once the main Indian trail parallel to the lake. The diameter of the stump was about two feet. Near the heart there were very distinct cuts of a sharp, broad-bitted axe. Mr. Lapham preserved a piece of this tree, that is now in our museum, donated by Professor J. L. Cassells. The annual layers of growth are very thin, and difficult to count, but are about four hundred in number, outside the ancient chopping. Another tree was found in Newburgh, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, more than thirty years since, with marks of an axe near the centre, represented to have one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty layers of growth over it, apparently the work of a sharp, broad-bitted axe. In the cabinet of the Ashtabula Historical Society, at Jefferson, Ashtabula County, Ohio, there was, some years since, a piece of wood with ancient axe marks of about the same date. I have heard of two others in northeastern Ohio, which I have not seen, and which may have been the work of a dull, narrow-bitted axe in the hands of a savage, and not the work of white men; but the Indians of northern Ohio could not have long been in possession of metal tomahawks or squaw hatchets, in the year 1670. Such cuts, if made by them, could be only a few years more ancient.