This was indeed a great peril; the dwellings above Quebec were without defence, and separated so far from each other that they stretched out nearly two leagues. But providentially the plan of these terrible foes was made known to the inhabitants of the town through an Iroquois prisoner. Immediately the most feverish activity was exerted in preparations for defence; the country houses and those of the Lower Town were abandoned, and the inhabitants took refuge in the palace, in the fort, with the Ursulines, or with the Jesuits; redoubts were raised, loop-holes bored and patrols established. At Ville-Marie no fewer precautions were taken; the governor surrounded a mill which he had erected in 1658, by a palisade, a ditch, and four bastions well entrenched. It stood on a height of the St. Louis Hill, and, called at first the Mill on the Hill, it became later the citadel of Montreal. Anxiety still prevailed everywhere, but God, who knows how to raise up, in the very moment of despair, the instruments which He uses in His infinite wisdom to protect the countries dear to His heart, that same God who gave to France the heroic Joan of Arc, produced for Canada an unexpected defender. Dollard and sixteen brave Montrealers were to offer themselves as victims to save the colony. Their devotion, which surpasses all that history shows of splendid daring, proves the exaltation of the souls of those early colonists. One morning in the month of July, 1660, Dollard, accompanied by sixteen valiant comrades, presented himself at the altar of the church in Montreal; these Christian heroes came to ask the God of the strong to bless the resolve which they had taken to go and sacrifice themselves for their brothers. Immediately after mass, tearing themselves from the embraces of their relatives, they set out, and after a long and toilsome march arrived at the foot of the Long Rapid, on the left bank of the Ottawa; the exact point where they stopped is probably Greece's Point, five or six miles above Carillon, for they knew that the Iroquois returning from the hunt must pass this place. They installed themselves within a wretched palisade, where they were joined almost at once by two Indian chiefs who, having challenged each other's courage, sought an occasion to surpass one another in valour. They were Anahotaha, at the head of forty Hurons, and Metiomegue, accompanied by four Algonquins. They had not long to wait; two canoes bore the Iroquois crews within musket shot; those who escaped the terrible volley which received them and killed the majority of them, hastened to warn the band of three hundred other Iroquois from whom they had become detached. The Indians, relying on an easy victory, hastened up, but they hurled themselves in vain upon the French, who, sheltered by their weak palisade, crowned its stakes with the heads of their enemies as these were beaten down. Exasperated by this unexpected check, the Iroquois broke up the canoes