While treating of the early history of the Recollects we may now anticipate by a few years a circumstance of tragic importance. In the year 1625 there occurred at the Sault-au-Récollet an event which has given it its name. This year, the Recollect father, Nicholas Viel, had gone two years before with Fathers Joseph le Caron and Gabriel Sagard, to the country of the Hurons. They were now invited by the Hurons to descend the river to trade with the settlement at Quebec. Father Viel had accepted the invitation because he wished to make his annual spiritual retreat at the Convent of Notre Dame des Anges and he took with him one of his Indian neophytes, whom he had instructed and baptized, a young boy named Ahuntsic. Among the convoy, in the same canoe, were some Indians who were secretly ill disposed to the missionary and when they found themselves separated from the other canoes by bad weather on the river, they fell upon Father Viel and Ahuntsic in the last sault near to Montreal and the swift flowing rapids soon submerged them in their deep waters. The spots of Ahuntsic and Sault-au-Récollet commemorate this event although the disaster occurred at the latter place as said. [Illustration: THE MARTYRDOM OF THE RECOLLET VIEL AND THE NEOPHYTE AHUNTSIC AT SAULT-AU-RECOLLET. (After George Delfosse)] Later in the summer of 1615 Champlain redeemed his pledge to explore the Indian country. On the 9th of July, 1615, Champlain left the fort with two men, one of whom was his servant, and another an interpreter, and ten savages to manage the two canoes on a voyage of exploration. Father le Caron had already gone ahead. Champlain's expedition with the allied tribes into the country of the Iroquois was one of the most important undertakings of his life--both on account of the length of the journey and the knowledge he obtained of the lake region. He lost prestige by this journey, however, both with the Indians and his French Canadians. It is not to our purpose to follow him on this voyage but we cannot refrain from mentioning the Huron village of Carhagouaha which lay between Nottawasaga Bay and Lake Simcoe. It was to this village that Father le Caron bent his steps, and where Champlain joined him on August 12th. The triple palisades, long houses, containing several households and other distinctive features of the village of Hochelaga discovered by Cartier, were there reproduced. He returned to the post at the end of June, 1616, and there he found Sieur du Pont. "We also saw," he says, "all the holy Fathers (Father Jamay and Brother du Plessis) who had remained at our settlement and they were very glad to see us and we to see them." Thus the Recollect fathers having left "our" settlement at Quebec had come up to Montreal as we may call the post at the Rapids. From their arrival dates the ecclesiastical life of our city and the introduction of Christianity. Champlain left the Sault on the 8th day of July, 1616, reaching Quebec on July 11. Shortly, on