We landed to-day on the "Island of Skulls," an ancient sepulchre of the Hurons. Some skulls and bones were scattered about, with the rough stones which had once been heaped over them. The spot was most wild and desolate, rising from the water edge in successive ledges of rock to a considerable height, with a few blasted gray pines here and there, round which several pair of hawks were wheeling and uttering their shrill cry. We all declared we would not dine on this ominous island, and proceeded. We doubled a remarkable cape mentioned by Henry as the _Pointe aux Grondines_. There is always a heavy swell here, and a perpetual sound of breakers on the rocks, whence its name. Only a few years ago a trader in his canoe, with sixteen people, were wrecked and lost on this spot. We also passed within some miles of the mouth of the Rivière des Français, the most important of all the rivers which flow into Lake Huron.[53] It forms the line of communication for the north-west traders from Montreal; the common route is up the Ottawa River, across Lake Nippissing, and down the River Français into Lake Huron, and by the Sault-Sainte-Marie into Lake Superior. Pray have a map before you during this voyage. Leaving behind this cape and river, we came again upon lovely groups of Elysian islands, channels winding among rocks and foliage, and more fields of water-lilies. In passing through a beautiful channel, I had an opportunity of seeing the manner in which an Indian communicates with his friends when _en route_. A branch was so arranged as to project far across the water and catch the eye: in a cleft at the extremity a piece of birch bark was stuck with some hieroglyphic marks scratched with red ochre, of which we could make nothing--one figure, I thought, represented a fish. To-day we caught eleven bass, shot four pigeons, also a large water-snake--which last I thought a gratuitous piece of cruelty. We dined upon a large and picturesque island--large in comparison with those we usually selected, being perhaps two or three miles round; it was very woody and wild, intersected by deep ravines, and rising in bold, abrupt precipices. We dined luxuriously under a group of trees: the heat was overpowering, and the mosquitoes very troublesome. After dinner we pursued our course through an archipelago of islets, rising out of the blue waves, and fringed with white water-lilies. Little fairy Edens, of such endless variety in form and colour, and of such wondrous and fantastic beauty, I know not how to describe them. We landed on one, where there was a rock so exactly resembling the head and part of a turtle, that I could have taken it for sculpture. The Indians look upon it as sacred, and it is customary for all who pass to leave an offering in money, tobacco, corn, &c., to the spirit. I duly left mine, but I could see by the laughing eyes of Jacques and Louis, that "the spirit" was not likely to be the better for my devotion.