a present.

When they heard me speak of the sea, vessels, scalps of the English, and
the young prisoner, they cried out more than before that he was a liar, and
thus they afterwards called him, as if it were the greatest insult they
could have done him, and they all united in saying that he ought to be put
to death, or else that he should tell with whom he had gone to the place
indicated, and state the lakes, rivers, and roads, by which he had gone. To
this he replied with assurance, that he had forgotten the name of the
savage, although he had stated to me his name more than twenty times, and
even on the previous day. In respect to the peculiarities of the country,
he had described them in a paper which he had handed me. Then I brought
forward the map and had it explained to the savages, who questioned him in
regard to it. To this he made no reply, but rather manifested by his sullen
silence his perverse nature.

As my mind was wavering in uncertainty, I withdrew by myself, and reflected
upon the above-mentioned particulars of the voyage of the English, and how
the reports of our liar were quite in conformity with it, also that there
was little probability of this young man's having invented all that, in
which case he would not have been willing to undertake the journey, but
that it was more probable that he had seen these things, and that his
ignorance did not permit him to reply to the questions of the savages. To
the above is to be added the fact that, if the report of the English be
true, the North Sea cannot be farther distant from this region than a
hundred leagues in latitude, for I was in latitude 47 deg. and in longitude
296 deg..[71] But it may be that the difficulties attending the passage of the
falls, the roughness of the mountains covered with shows, is the reason why
this people have no knowledge of the sea in question; indeed they have
always said that from the country of the Ochateguins it is a journey of