Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 7).djvu/162

 tauqua portage. "On the 30th (October) they arrived," Coffin testified, "at Chadakoin where they stayed four days, during which time Mons. Peon [Pean] with 200 men, cut a wagon road over the carrying place from Lake Erie to Lake chadakoin, viewed the situation which proved to their liking, so set off Nov. 3d for Niagara."

We have one other glimpse of these impetuous Frenchmen widening this first portage path from the Great Lakes toward the Ohio. Samuel Shattuck was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1741. In 1752 he went from his native town on a ranging expedition and was at Fort Oswego when Marin's party went down Lake Ontario. An officer and five soldiers—one of whom was this eleven-year-old lad—were instantly sent out to watch the French squadron of canoes. They followed them to Niagara and into Lake Erie. An autobiographical story has been taken down by Dr. Taylor from the lips of Shattuck's grandson. Soon after passing Niagara, the story goes, the boats were lost to sight; "but we expected to overtake them easily, and in fact did so sooner than was agree-