The next day they arrived at the shore of Lake Ontario.  Here they remained two days to make canoes out of the bark of the elm tree, in which they might travel to Niagara.  For this purpose the Indians first cut down a tree, then stripped off the bark in one entire sheet of about eighteen feet in length, the incision being lengthwise.  The canoe was now complete as to its bottom and sides.  Its ends were next closed, by sewing the bark together; and a few ribs and bars being introduced, the architecture was finished.  In this manner they made two canoes; of which one carried eight men, and the other nine.

A few days later Henry was handed over safe and sound to Sir William Johnson at Niagara.  He was then given the command of a corps of Indian allies which was to accompany the expedition under General Bradstreet to raise the siege of Detroit, which important place had been long invested by a great Indian chief, Pontiac, who still carried on the war on behalf of King Louis XV.  This enterprise was successful, and British control was extended to many places in central Canada.  Henry returned to Fort Michili-Makinak and regained much of the property which he had lost in the Indian attacks.  As some compensation for his former sufferings he received from the British commandant of Michili-Makinak the exclusive fur trade of Lake Superior.

The currency at that period, and long before, in Canadian history, was in beaver skins, which were approximately valued at the price of two shillings and sixpence a pound.  Otter skins were valued at six shillings each, and marten skins at one shilling and sixpence, and others in proportion; but all these things were classed at being worth so many beaver skins or proportion of beaver skins.  Thus, for example, the native canoemen and porters engaged by Henry for his winter hunts were paid each at the rate of a hundred pounds weight of beaver skins.[9]

[Footnote 9:  The smallest change, so to speak, was the skin of a marten, worth one shilling and sixpence.  If you went to a canteen for a drink you paid your score with a marten skin, unless the value of your refreshment exceeded the sum of eighteen pence.]

At various places on the River Ontonagan, which flows into Lake Superior, Henry was shown the extraordinary deposits of copper, which presented itself to the eye in masses of various weight.  The natives smelted the copper and beat it into spoons and bracelets.  It was so absolutely pure of any alloy that it required nothing but to be beaten into shape.  In one place Henry saw a mass of copper weighing not less than five tons, pure and malleable, so that with an axe he was able to cut off a portion weighing a hundred pounds.  He conjectured that this huge mass of copper had at some time been dislodged from the side of a lofty hill and thence rolled into the position where he found it.  Farther to the north of Lake Superior he found pieces of virgin copper remarkable for their form, some resembling leaves of vegetables, and others the shapes of animals.