Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
It rises gradually by those singular steps, or ridges, formerly banks or shores o£ antediluvian oceans, till it reaches the vicinity of the Holland river, a tortuous, sluggish, marshy, natural canal, flowing or lazily creeping into Lake Simcoe, at an elevation of upwards of seven-hundred and fifty feet above Lake Ontario, and emptying itself into Lake Huron by a series of rapids, called the Matchedash or Severn River.
It was on the eastern bank of the river Wye between Mud Lake and Matchedash Bay. Here the missionaries built a strong rectangular fort with walls of stone surmounted by palisades and with bastions at each corner. The interior buildings a chapel, a hospital, and dwellings for the missionaries and the engages although of wood, were supported on foundations of stone and cement.
That he did not explore it with any degree of thoroughness is evident from the terms of his narrative as well as from his statement that its length, east and west, is four hundred leagues. What he saw of Lake Huron was really the east shore of Georgian Bay, from the mouth of French River to the bottom of Matchedash Bay.
The ancient country of the Hurons is now the northern and eastern portion of Simcoe County, Canada West, and is embraced within the peninsula formed by the Nottawassaga and Matchedash Bays of Lake Huron, the River Severn, and Lake Simcoe. Its area was small, its population comparatively large. In the year 1639 the Jesuits made an enumeration of all its villages, dwellings, and families.
The points which Champlain names are there indicated, in each case with as careful identification of the locality as we are ever likely to get. For those who are not specialists in the topography of Huronia it may suffice that Champlain left Matchedash Bay not far from Penetanguishene, and thence went to Carmaron at the very north of the peninsula.
He crossed Byng Inlet, Franklin Inlet, Parry Sound, and the wider bay of Matchedash, and seems to have landed at the inlet now called Thunder Bay, at the entrance of the Bay of Matchedash, and a little west of the Harbor of Penetanguishine. An Indian trail led inland, through woods and thickets, across broad meadows, over brooks, and along the skirts of green acclivities.
From the mouth of the French River the course lay southward for mere than a hundred miles along the east shore of Georgian Bay, until the party arrived at the peninsula which lies between Nottawasaga and Matchedash Bays. Three or four miles inland from the west shore of this peninsula stood the town of Carhagouha, a triple-palisaded stronghold of the Hurons.
It was the seventeenth of August when they reached the Huron metropolis, Cahiague, in the modern township of Orillia, three leagues west of the river Severn, by which Lake Simcoe pours its waters into the bay of Matchedash. A shrill clamor of rejoicing, the fixed stare of wondering squaws, and the screaming flight of terrified children hailed the arrival of Champlain.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking