In 1660, another, and a most interesting reference to our Cataract
appeared in print; written by one Docteur Gendron. It does not appear
that he ever saw it, but he seems to have learnt a good deal about it;
of course he learnt it from the Indians; moreover, he learnt it from
Hurons, who dwelt in more or less proximity to it; from men who, no
doubt, themselves had seen it. He learnt it from the same source, not
improbably from the same men, from whom Fathers Ragueneau and Bressani
had gotten their less comprehensive knowledge of it--for he had a
special reason, in the line of his profession, for learning about it.
He had written home to France concerning it, at least three years
before Ragueneau, at least seven years before Bressani, had done so.
And, curiously enough, at the very time when Docteur Gendron wrote his
letters, Fathers Ragueneau and Bressani were also in that Huron
Country. It is, therefore, more than reasonably certain, that all three
of them being Europeans, all three living among the Hurons,--whose
territory was not large, through which news of the presence of white
men in those days traveled fast,--that they must have known each other,
not only as acquaintances, but as intimates. The Priests had their
headquarters at the Home of the Huron Mission, and the Docteur would,
for every reason, take up his residence in that same Indian Village.
Those three men,--with the exception of Champlain, the earliest known
chroniclers of the existence of Niagara Falls,--were doubtless near
neighbors and close friends, in the Huron Country, in the wilds of
Canada, over two hundred and fifty years ago.
[Illustration: NIAGARA IN EARLY DAYS, BY THOMAS COLE.]
In 1636, there had been published at Paris a work in five volumes,
written by one Pierre Davity, who had died the year before, entitled
"The Whole World; With all its Parts, States, Empires, Kingdoms,
Republics and Governments." It had been reissued at least twice by
1649. In all three of those Editions, "America, The Third Part of the
World," had been treated of at some length--especially the Southern
Hemisphere;--and while Canada had not been overlooked, there had been
no mention of Niagara.
In 1660, Jean Baptiste de Rocoles, who was both a Counsellor to the
King and also his State Historian, reissued the work, enlarged and
"brought up to date." This issue was in three volumes, folio; rather
ponderous tomes; well printed, and elaborately bound. As in the
previous editions, it was issued by consent of the King, and with the
approval of the Clergy; and it now had the official editing of the
King's Historian.
At the end of the portion relating to America--that is, at the very end
of the last volume--its contents evidently coming to Rocoles' notice at
the last moment; probably after the work was entirely printed (for the
preceding page bears the imprint, "End of America"; and there is no
mention of its contents in the Index), is a short Chapter entitled
(translated),
"Certain Special Information about the Country of the Hurons in New
France. Recorded by the Sieur Gendron, Doctor of Medicine, who has
lived for a long time in that Country."
This supplementary Chapter is six pages in length, and, while it is not
signed, we may justly assume that Rocoles himself, and none other,
wrote it. It begins,--
"One of my friends having lately placed in my hands a few letters
written in the years 1644 and 1645, which Sieur Gendron, native of
Voue in Beausse, had sent to him from that Country [of the Hurons],
where he was at that time; I have had the curiosity to transcribe
from them, word for word, what follows; for a better knowledge and
acquaintance of those lands, newly discovered. And I have done so
the more willingly because this person is worthy of credence, and
he wrote these letters to men of merit, who had travelled much."
In the letters thus transcribed, "word for word," Sieur Gendron gives
the location of the Huron Country, where he writes,--
"I now am," "as between the 44th and 45th degrees of Latitude; and
as to Longitude, it is half an hour more to the west than Quebec."
From his descriptions of the Lake Region, from his location of other
Indian tribes, and from the context, Sieur Gendron was very near the
southern end of Georgian Bay, when he wrote those letters. That he was
in the same Indian Village, as was the House, or Headquarters, of the
Mission to the Hurons (which was located at that point), is deducable
even more strongly, from the fact, that Father Ragueneau, in his report
to his Superior, in 1648, uses, word for word, over more than a score
of printed lines, in locating the adjoining Indian tribes, the language
of Sieur Gendron, written at least three, possibly four, years before,
and published by Rocoles in 1660.
That he did so, not plagiarizing, but with the knowledge and consent,
and not improbably (in those parts of his letter which dealt with
physical conditions) with the assistance, of Docteur Gendron, must be
admitted by those who know from history of the splendid abilities, the
exalted piety, and the noble character of Father Paul Ragueneau, S.J.,
who, after his labors amongst the Hurons were ended, became the
Superior of his Order at Quebec--that is, in Canada.