was madness to think that the Iroquois could have forgotten so soon the insult inflicted on their arms by the expedition of M. de Denonville, or the breach made in their independence by the abduction of their chiefs sent to France as convicts. The warning of their approaching incursion had meanwhile reached Quebec through a savage named Ataviata; unfortunately, the Jesuit Fathers had no confidence in this Indian; they assured the governor-general that Ataviata was a worthless fellow, and M. de Denonville made the mistake of listening too readily to these prejudices and of not at least redoubling his precautions. It was on the night between August 4th and 5th, 1689; all was quiet on the Island of Montreal. At the end of the evening's conversation, that necessary complement of every well-filled day, the men had hung their pipes, the faithful comrades of their labour, to a rafter of the ceiling; the women had put away their knitting or pushed aside in a corner their indefatigable spinning-wheel, and all had hastened to seek in sleep new strength for the labour of the morrow. Outside, the elements were unchained, the rain and hail were raging. As daring as the Normans when they braved on frail vessels the fury of the seas, the Iroquois, to the number of fifteen hundred, profited by the storm to traverse Lake St. Louis in their bark canoes, and landed silently on the shore at Lachine. They took care not to approach the forts; the darkness was so thick that the soldiers discovered nothing unusual and did not fire the cannon as was the custom on the approach of the enemy. Long before daybreak the savages, divided into a number of squads, had surrounded the houses within a radius of several miles. Suddenly a piercing signal is given by the chiefs, and at once a horrible clamour rends the air; the terrifying war-cry of the Iroquois has roused the sleepers and raised the hair on the heads of the bravest. The colonists leap from their couches, but they have no time to seize their weapons; demons who seem to be vomited forth by hell have already broken in the doors and windows. The dwellings which the Iroquois cannot penetrate are delivered over to the flames, but the unhappy ones who issue from them in confusion to escape the tortures of the fire are about to be abandoned to still more horrible torments. The pen refuses to describe the horrors of this night, and the imagination of Dante can hardly in his "Inferno" give us an idea of it. The butchers killed the cattle, burned the houses, impaled women, compelled fathers to cast their children into the flames, spitted other little ones still alive and compelled their mothers to roast them. Everything was burned and pillaged except the forts, which were not attacked; two hundred persons of all ages and of both sexes perished under torture, and about fifty, carried away to the villages, were bound to the stake and burned by a slow fire. Nevertheless the great majority of the inhabitants were able