g it with branches of trees and kindling a
fire to drive off beasts of prey, he crept in and lay down to sleep.
He was awakened by a crackling of flame. The fire had caught the pine
boughs and the tepee was in a blaze. Radisson flung his snow-shoes and
clothing as far as he could, and broke from the fire-trap.
Half-dressed and lame, shuddering with cold and hunger, he felt through
the dark over the snow for his clothing. A far cry rang through the
forest like the bay of the wolf pack. Radisson kept solitary watch
till morning, when he found that the cry came from Indians sent out to
find him by Groseillers. He was taken to an encampment, where the
Crees were building canoes to go to the Bay of the North.

The entire band, with the two explorers, then launched on the rivers
flowing north. "We were in danger to perish a thousand times from the
ice jam," writes Radisson. ". . . At last we came full sail from a
deep bay . . . we came to the seaside, where we found an old house all
demolished and battered with bullets. . . . They (the Crees) told us
about Europeans. . . . We went from isle to isle all that
summer. . . . This region had a great store of cows (caribou). . . .
We went farther to see the place that the Indians were to pass the
summer. . . . The river (where they went) came from the lake that
empties itself in . . . the Saguenay . . . a hundred leagues from the
great river of Canada (the St. Lawrence) . . . to where we were in the
Bay of the North. . . . We passed the summer quietly coasting the
seaside. . . . The people here burn not their prisoners, but knock
them on the head. . . . They have a store of turquoise. . . . They
find green stones, very fine, at the same Bay of the Sea
(labradorite). . . . We went up another river to the Upper Lake
(Winnipeg)." [10]

For years the dispute has been waged with zeal worthy of a better cause
whether Radisson referred to Hudson Bay in this passage. The French
claim that he did; the English that he did not. "The house demolished
with bullets" was probably an old trading post, contend the English;
but there was no trading post except Radisson's west of Lake Superior
at that time, retort the French. By "cows" Radisson meant buffalo, and
no buffalo were found as far east as Hudson Bay, say the English; by
"cows" Radisson meant caribou and deer, and herds of these frequented
the shores of Hudson Bay, answer the French. No river comes from the
Saguenay t