The two villages referred to are Hochelaga and Ville Marie, now
Montreal. The latter place was founded by Maisonneuve in 1642. In Sir
William Dawson's _Fossil Men_ is a picture of Hochelaga as seen by
Cartier, with an oak tree near it. This oak is sketched from one in the
McGill University grounds, and it needs but a little stretch of the
imagination to consider them identical, though actually this is not so.
The poem traces the history of Montreal from its foundation up to the
present time. Jacques Cartier's visit was made in October, 1535, when
he was well received by the Hochelagans. When Champlain came, in 1611,
Hochelaga had disappeared. The reference to the flood occurs again in
"Nelson's Appeal for Maisonneuve." The incident took place in 1642, and
Maisonneuve actually fulfilled his vow and bore a heavy cross to the
mountain top, where it was planted. Dollard, with seventeen Frenchmen
and fifty Indians, by heroic self-sacrifice, in 1660, saved Canada from
destruction by the Iroquois. Vaudreuil surrendered Canada to the
English on September 8th, 1760. He had been driven to Montreal, and was
surrounded by 17,000 men, under General Amherst. The Americans took
Montreal in 1775, and were defeated at Chateauguay, October 26th, 1813,
and at Chrysler's Farm, November 11th, of the same year. In both cases,
the Canadians were greatly outnumbered.