This country contained seventeen
or eighteen villages, and a population, including women and children, of
about twenty thousand. One of the villages visited by Champlain, called
Cahiague, occupied a site near the present town of Orillia. At another
village, called Carhagouha, some distance farther west, the explorer found
the Recollet friar Le Caron, who had accompanied him from France only a few
months before as above mentioned. And here, on the 12th of August, 1615, Le
Caron celebrated, in Champlain's presence, the first mass ever heard in the
wilderness of western Canada.
After spending some time in the Huron country, Champlain accompanied the
natives on an expedition against their hereditary foes, the Iroquois, whose
domain occupied what is now the central and western part of the State
of New York. Crossing Lake Couchiching and coasting down the north-eastern
shore of Lake Simcoe, they made their way across country to the Bay of
Quinte, thence into Lake Ontario, and thence into the enemy's country.
Having landed, they concealed their canoes in the woods and marched inland.
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