tles of oxen, kettles of dogs, kettles of porridge and potatoes and
corn and what not? That is it--what not? Were the kettles drugged?
Who knows? The feasters ate till their eyes were rolling lugubriously;
and still the kettles came round. The Indians ate till they were
torpid as swollen corpses, and still came the white men with more
kettles, while the mischievous French lad, Radisson, danced a mad jig,
shouting, yelling, "Eat! eat! Beat the drum! Awake! awake! Cheer up!
Eat! eat!"

By midnight every soul of the feast had tumbled over sound asleep, and
at the rear gates were the French, stepping noiselessly, speaking in
whispers, launching their boats loaded with provisions and ammunition.
The soldiers were for going back and butchering every warrior, but the
Jesuits forbade such treachery. Then Radisson, light-spirited as if
the refugees had been setting out on a holiday, perpetrated yet a last
trick on the warriors. To the bell rope of the main gate he fastened a
pig, so when the Indians would pull the rope for admission, they would
hear the tramp of a sentry inside. Then he stuffed effigies of men on
guard round the windows of the fort.

It was a pitchy, sleety night, the river roaring with the loose ice of
spring flood, the forests noisy with the boisterous March wind. Out on
the maelstrom of ice and flood launched the fifty-three colonists,
March 20, 1658. By April they were safe {103} inside the walls of
Quebec, and chance hunters brought word that what with sleep, and the
measured tramp, tramp of the pig, and the baying of the dogs, and the
clucking of the chickens inside the fort, the escape of the whites had
not been discovered for a week. The Indians thought the whites had
gone into retreat for especially long prayers. Then a warrior climbed
the inner palisades, and rage knew no bounds. The fort was looted and
burnt to the ground.

Peltry traffic was the life of New France. Without it the colony would
have perished, and now the rupture of peace with the Iroquois cut off
that traffic. To the Iroquois land south of the St. Lawrence the
French dared not go, and the land of the Hurons was a devastated
wilderness. The boats that came out to New France were compelled to
return without a single peltry, but there still remained the unknown
land of the Algonquin northwest and beyond the Great Lakes. Year after
year young French adventurers essayed the exploration of that land. In
1634 Jean Nic