Fortunately, as we have already seen, Talon was not lost.  At the very time when these letters were written he was on his way back to France, where he spent the winter hard at work with Colbert—­preparing for the dispatch of settlers and soldiers in the spring.  The minister displayed the same zeal as the year before.  He appropriated ample funds, gave urgent orders, and seemed to make the Canadian reinforcements his personal affair.  Talon sailed from La Rochelle about the middle of May 1670.  He was accompanied by Perrot again, and also by six Recollets, four fathers and two brothers.  After three months at sea he was nearly shipwrecked once more, this time near Tadoussac, almost at the end of his journey.  On August 18, after an absence from Canada of one year and nine months, he landed once more at Quebec.

CHAPTER VIII

RENEWED EFFORTS AND PROGRESS

When Talon arrived at Quebec, New France had again just escaped an Indian war.  A party of Iroquois hunting near the country of the Outaouais met two men of their nation who had been prisoners of the Outaouais and had succeeded in escaping.  These informed their fellow-tribesmen that the Outaouais village was undefended, almost every warrior being absent.  The Iroquois then attacked the village, destroyed it, and brought with them as prisoners about one hundred women and children.  The Outaouais warriors, when apprised of the raid, started in pursuit, but did not succeed in overtaking the raiders.  However, receiving a reinforcement of another party of allied Indians, they invaded the Senecas’ territory.  These hostilities aroused the temper of the Iroquois, and a general Indian war threatened, into which the French would unavoidably be drawn.  At that moment Garakonthie, the Iroquois chief who had always been friendly to the French, advised the Five Nations to send an embassy to the governor of Canada asking him to compose these differences.  The Five Nations agreed, and Iroquois and Outaouais delegates, many hundreds in number, came to Quebec.  A great council was held lasting three days, and Courcelle succeeded in bringing about an understanding between the rival tribes.  After the meetings Garakonthie asked to be baptized, and Laval himself performed the ceremony.

It was but a few days after these events that Talon arrived, and, notwithstanding the improvement in the situation, he does not seem to have deemed peace perfectly secure, for he wrote to the king that it would be advisable to send two hundred more soldiers.  He added that the Iroquois caused great injury to the trade of the colony by hunting the beaver in the territories of the tribes allied with the French, and selling the skins to Dutch and English traders.  In another letter Talon set forth that these traders drew from the Iroquois 1,000,000 livres’ worth of the best beaver, and he suggested the construction of a small ship of the galley type to cruise on Lake