. Both sides at once began
building forts; but when he could, Radisson always avoided war. Having
gained victory enough to hold the Iroquois in check, he wanted no
massacre. That night he embarked his men noiselessly; and never once
stopping to kindle camp-fire, they paddled from Friday night to Tuesday
morning. The _portages _over rocks in the dark cut the _voyageurs'_
moccasins to shreds. Every landing was marked with the blood of
bruised feet. Sometimes they avoided leaving any trace of themselves
by walking in the stream, dragging their boats along the edge of the
rapids. By Tuesday the Indians were so fagged that they could go no
farther without rest. Canoes were moored in the hiding of the rushes
till the _voyageurs_ slept. They had been twenty-two days going from
Three Rivers to Lake Nipissing, and had not slept one hour on land.

It was October when they came to Lake Superior. The forests were
painted in all the glory of autumn, and game abounded. White fish
appeared under the clear, still waters of the lake like shoals of
floating metal; bears were seen hulking away from the watering places
of sandy shores; and wild geese whistled overhead. After the terrible
dangers of the voyage, with scant sleep and scanter fare, the country
seemed, as Radisson says, a terrestrial paradise. The Indians gave
solemn thanks to their gods of earth and forest, "and we," writes
Radisson, "to the God of gods." Indian summer lay on the land.
November found the explorers coasting the south shore of Lake Superior.
They passed the Island of Michilimackinac with its stone arches.
Radisson heard from the Indians of the copper mines. He saw the
pictured rocks that were to become famous for beauty. "I gave it the
name of St. Peter because that was my name and I was the first
Christian to see it," he writes of the stone arch. "There were in
these places very deep caves, caused by the violence of the waves."
Jesuits had been on the part of Lake Superior near the Sault, and poor
Menard perished in the forests of Lake Michigan; but Radisson and
Groseillers were the first white men to cruise from south to west and
west to north, where a chain of lakes and waterways leads from the
Minnesota lake country to the prairies now known as Manitoba. Before
the end of November the explorers rounded the western end of Lake
Superior and proceeded northwest. Radisson records that they came to
great winter encampments of the Crees; and the