These are typical nations of Indians of the days of New France, the crafty, strong, nomadic, warlike and well organized Iroquois on whom the missionaries could make little or no impression, the allies of the English and the most feared of all the nations; and the less intelligent and more domesticated, the traders and the canoemen, the hunter and fisher, the unorganized Hurons, who suffered the missionaries to settle among them and pretended to be converted because it did not interfere but rather increased their comfort, the allies of the French, with little initiative and no cohesion. CHAPTER X. THE COUREUR DES BOIS AND THE VOYAGEUR. “I have passed the warden cities at the Eastern watergate, Where the hero and the martyr laid the cornerstone of State, The habitant, coureurs-des-bois, and hardy voyageur, Where lives a breed more strong at need to venture or endure.” SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE. THE COUREUR DES BOIS AND THE VOYAGEUR. An island just where the Ottawa River joins the St. Lawrence always suggests to me in its name a Frenchman who, in the days following Champlain, penetrated beyond the Mer Douce (Lake Huron) and was one of the first white men to sail on Lake Superior. This was Perrot,[12] who, like Etienne Brulé with Champlain, was known as a coureur des bois, a runner of the woods, a trader, a guide, a hunter, a woodsman. Without him and his companion, the voyageur, the efforts of priest and noble alike to penetrate the great forests would have been all in vain. They followed the trails of the deer and other wild animals who were the ancient roadmakers, and took advantage of all the waterways in their light canoes. These journeys were not only full of danger, but were attended by much hardship. In one of the journals of a missionary priest from Quebec to the Huron Indians who lived on the south-eastern shore of Georgian Bay, we read: