ey refused
to leave the Indian lodges when peace had liberated them. Not so
Radisson. Though only seventeen, flattered vanity never caused him to
forget the gratitude he owed the Mohawk family. Though he relates his
life with a frankness that leaves nothing untold, he never at any time
returned treachery for kindness. The very chivalry of the French
nature endangered him all the more. Would he forget his manhood, his
birthright of a superior race, his inheritance of nobility from a
family that stood foremost among the _noblesse_ of New France?

[Illustration: Albany, from an Old Print.]

The spring of 1653 came with unloosening of the rivers and stirring of
the forest sap and fret of the warrior blood. Radisson's Iroquois
father held great feasts in which he heaved up the hatchet to break the
kettle of sagamite against all enemies. Would Radisson go on the
war-path with the braves, or stay at home with the women and so lose
the respect of the tribe? In the hope of coming again within reach of
Three Rivers, he offered to join the Iroquois in their wars. The
Mohawks were delighted with his spirit, but they feared to lose their
young warrior. Accepting his offer, they refused to let him accompany
them to Quebec, but assigned him to a band of young braves, who were to
raid the border-lands between the Huron country of the Upper Lakes and
the St. Lawrence. This was not what Radisson wanted, but he could not
draw back. There followed months of wild wanderings round the regions
of Niagara. The band of young braves passed dangerous places with
great precipices and a waterfall, where the river was a mile wide and
unfrozen. Radisson was constrained to witness many acts against the
Eries, which must have one of two effects on white blood,--either turn
the white man into a complete savage, or disgust him utterly with
savage life. Leaving the Mohawk village amid a blare of guns and
shouts, the young braves on their maiden venture passed successively
through the lodges of Oneidas, Onondagas, Senecas, and Cayugas, where
they were feasted almost to death by the Iroquois Confederacy.[11]
Then they marched to the vast wilderness of snow-padded forests and
heaped windfall between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.

Snow still lay in great drifts under the shadow of hemlock and spruce;
and the braves skimmed forward winged with the noiseless speed of
snow-shoes. When the snow became too soft from thaw for snow-shoes,
they pau