llers, at Three Rivers, with ambitious designs of exploration in
the unknown land of which he had heard at Green Bay and on Lake
Nipissing. Jacques Cartier had discovered only one great river, had
laid the foundations of only one small province; Champlain had only
made the circuit of the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, and the Great Lakes;
but here was a country--if the Indians spoke the truth--greater than
all the empires of Europe together, a country bounded only by three
great seas, the Sea of the North, the Sea of the South, and the Sea of
Japan, a country so vast as to stagger the utmost conception of little
New France.

It was unnecessary for Groseillers to say more. The ambition of young
Radisson took fire. Long ago, when a captive among the Mohawks, he had
cherished boyish dreams that it was to be his "destiny to discover many
wild nations"; and here was that destiny opening the door for him,
pointing the way, beckoning to the toils and dangers and glories of the
discoverer's life. Radisson had been tortured among the Mohawks and
besieged among the Onondagas. Groseillers had been among the Huron
missions that were destroyed and among the Algonquin canoes that were
attacked. Both explorers knew what perils awaited them; but what
youthful blood ever chilled at prospect of danger when a single _coup_
might win both wealth and fame? Radisson had not been home one month;
but he had no sooner heard the plan than he "longed to see himself in a
boat."

A hundred and fifty Algonquins had come down the Ottawa from the Great
Beyond shortly after Radisson returned from Onondaga. Six of these
Algonquins had brought their furs to Three Rivers. Some emissaries had
gone to Quebec to meet the governor; but the majority of the Indians
remained at Montreal to avoid the ambuscade of the Mohawks on Lake St.
Peter. Radisson and Groseillers were not the only Frenchmen conspiring
to wrest fame and fortune from the Upper Country. When the Indians
came back from Quebec, they were accompanied by thirty young French
adventurers, gay as boys out of school or gold hunters before the first
check to their plans. There were also two Jesuits sent out to win the
new domain for the cross.[5] As ignorant as children of the hardships
ahead, the other treasure-seekers kept up nonchalant boasting that
roused the irony of such seasoned men as Radisson and Groseillers.
"What fairer bastion than a good tongue," Radisson demands cynically,
"espec