ing for their entertainment.

Now the journey up the river began. On the whole, the Frenchmen fared
tolerably well. They took care always to sleep near the young warrior
who had been the first to smoke the peace-pipe, and whom they regarded
as their protector. The hostile party among the Indians was headed by
a wily old fellow who frequently threw the prisoners into a panic by
frenzied appeals to the warriors to let him avenge on the white men the
death of his son, who had been killed by the Miamis. The Frenchmen
invariably met this excitement by fresh gifts. Thus, while they were
not openly robbed, they were gradually relieved of their earthly
possessions by a sort of primitive blackmail.

Day after day the paddles plied by sinewy arms drove the canoes up the
stream. A lake {301} was passed, which later was called Lake Pepin, in
honor of one of a party of their countrymen whom they met a short time
afterward.[2] On the nineteenth day after their capture, the prisoners
landed, along with their masters, on the spot where St. Paul now stands.

The three Frenchmen's troubles now began in real earnest. First they
must see their canoe broken to pieces, to prevent their escape, then
the remainder of their goods divided. After this their captors started
out for their abodes, which lay to the north, near the lake now called
Mille {302} Lacs. It was a hard experience for the Frenchmen to tramp
with these athletic savages, wading ponds and marshes glazed with ice
and swimming ice-cold streams. "Our Legs," says Hennepin, "were all
over Blood, being cut by the Ice." Seeing the friar inclined to lag,
the Indians took a novel method of quickening his pace. They set fire
to the grass behind him and then, taking him by the hands, they ran
forward with him. He was nearly spent when, after five days of
exhausting travel, they reached the homes of the Sioux.

Entering the village, Hennepin saw a sight that curdled his blood.
Stakes, with bundles of straws attached to them seemed in readiness for
burning himself and his comrades.

Imagine their amazement when, instead of being roasted, they were taken
into a lodge and treated to a kind of whortle-berry pudding _a la
sauvage_!

The next matter of interest was a noisy wrangle among the warriors as
to the distribution of the prisoners. To his great terror, Hennepin
was assigned to Aquipagetin, the wily old villain who had insisted on
the death of the Frenchmen and had per