Mr. C.W. Butterfield contributes an article on the Primitive Northwest, to last number of the American Antiquarian. He says that early in the seventeenth century French settlements, few in number, were scattered along the wooded shores of the river St. Lawrence in Canada. To the westward, upon the Ottowa river, and the Georgian bay, were the homes of Indian nations with whom these settlers had commercial relations, and among some of whom were located Jesuit missionaries. In the year 1615, Lake Huron was discovered. To it was given the name of the Fresh Sea (Mer Douce). But, as yet, no white man had set foot upon any portion of what now constitutes the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Eastern Minnesota. And thereafter, for nearly a score of years this whole region remained, so far as the visitation of white men was concerned, an undiscovered country; and such it continued down to the year 1684. However, previous to this date, something had been learned by the French settlers upon the St. Lawrence, of this (to them) far off land; but the information has been obtained wholly from the Indians. This knowledge was of necessity crude and, to a considerable extent, uncertain. Such of it as has been preserved is properly treated of under the following heads: First, as to what had been gleaned concerning the physical aspects of the country; second, as to what had been brought to light relative to the various tribes inhabiting this region. Previous to 1634, nothing had been learned of Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair, or Lake Michigan although it was understood there was some kind of a water-way connecting the Fresh Sea (Lake Huron) with Ontario. A little knowledge had been gained of a great body of fresh water lying beyond the "Mer Douce," "a grand lac," so called by the French--now known as Lake Superior. The length of this superior lake with that of the Fresh Sea (Lake Huron), the Indians declared was a journey of full thirty days in canoes. At the outlet of the great lake was what was described by the savages, as a considerable rapid, to which the French gave the name of "Sault de Gaston," the present Sault St. Marie, in the St. Mary's river, the stream, which, it is well known, flows from Lake Superior into Lake Huron. Accounts also had been received from the Indians prior to the year last mentioned, of a lake of no great size, through which flowed a river discharging its waters into the Fresh Sea (Lake Huron). These were reports of Lake Winnebago and Fox river, in what is now the State of Wisconsin. As the French upon the St. Lawrence had no knowledge as yet of Lake Michigan, they imagined the location of this small lake, and its river was beyond, and to the northwest of Lake Huron and that they emptied into it; Green Bay into the head of which Fox river really flows, being (like Lake Michigan) wholly unknown to them.