The Jesuits had a mission at “Gannegora,” the Indian name of a town and a fort near Boughton Hill, but were absent when La Salle and the Sulpitians arrived there. The Indians discouraged them from taking the Genesee route to the Ohio, representing that it required six days’ journey of twelve leagues or thirty-six miles each. Charlevoix affirms that the Genesee is navigable for canoes sixty leagues or one hundred and eighty miles, and from thence it is only ten leagues or thirty miles by land to the Allegheny or Ohio, river of the Iroquois. Mr. Marshall has shown that this portage was in Allegany County, New York, from near Belvidere to Olean. By the united efforts of the Jesuits, the Dutch and the Senecas, they were persuaded to relinquish this route and hasten back to their canoes, to avoid violence on the part of the savages. They coasted along the south shore of Lake Ontario, passing the Niagara without examination, and reached Burlington Bay on the 22d of September. DeNonville, in 1687, states that La Salle had houses and people at Niagara in 1668.—(Historical Documents, vol. 1, p. 244). If this is true, La Salle must have been well acquainted with the portage to Lake Erie, around the falls. Why he should have selected the more difficult route by way of Burlington Bay, and a portage of fifteen miles to Grand River, is nowhere explained. Not far from the head of the bay was the village of Tenouatouan, on the path to Grand River. Here the party met Joliet and a few Indians, on his return from Mackinaw. He had been sent by the intendant to find the copper mines of Lake Superior, and appears to have been the first Frenchman to have navigated Lake Erie. He took that route home at the instigation of the Ottawas, and of an Iroquois prisoner he was taking home to his people. According to Galinée, when they were fifty leagues west of Grand River, this Iroquois became alarmed on account of the Andasterrionons, Errionons, Eriqueronons, or Eries of the south shore, with whom the Senecas were at war. They were thus obliged to leave their canoes and make the journey to Tenouatouan by land. La Salle’s plan might have been to cross from Lake Ontario to Grand River, down it to the lake, thence along the north shore of Erie to the mouth of the Maumee River, on the route referred to by him in 1682; up this stream to the portage at Fort Wayne, and down the waters of the Wabash into an unknown world.