cture of savage life, with its nastiness, its
alternate gluttony and starving, and its ferocity, as it would be hard
to find elsewhere, drawn in such English as the wildest humorist would
not dream of inventing.

Pierre Esprit Radisson was born at St. Malo, in France, and came to
Canada in May, 1651. His home was at Three Rivers, where his relatives
were settled. One day he went out gunning with two friends. They were
warned by a man whom they met that hostile Indians were lurking in the
neighborhood. Still they went on, forgetting their danger in the
enjoyment of shooting ducks. Finally, however, one of the party said
he would not go further, and the other joined him. This led Radisson
to banter them, saying that he would go ahead and kill game enough for
all.

On he went, shooting again and again, until {192} he had more geese and
ducks than he could carry home. Finally, after hiding some of his game
in a hollow tree, he started back. When he came near the place where
he had left his companions, imagine his horror at finding their bodies,
"one being shott through with three boulletts and two blowes of an
hatchett on the head, and the other run through in several places with
a sword and smitten with an hatchett."

Suddenly he was surrounded by Indians who rose, as it were, out of the
ground and rushed upon him, yelling like fiends. He fired his gun,
wounding two with the duck-shot, and his pistol, without hurting any
one. The next moment he found himself thrown on the ground and
disarmed, without a single blow.

His courage had impressed the Indians so favorably that they treated
him very kindly. When they pitched their camp, they offered him some
of their meat, which smelt so horribly that he could not touch it.
Seeing this, they cooked a special dish for him. He says it was a
nasty mess, but, to show his appreciation, he swallowed some of it.
This pleased his captors, and they further showed their good-will by
untying him and letting him lie down comfortably {193} between two of
them, covered with a red coverlet through which he "might have counted
the starrs."

The Indians traveled homeward in very leisurely fashion, stopping by
the way for days at a time and making merry with Radisson, to whom they
evidently had taken a strong liking. When they tried to teach him to
sing, and he turned the tables by singing to them in French, they were
delighted. "Often," he says, "have I sunged in French, to wh