ot have
suspicion of us."

The two white men immensely enjoyed the profound deference paid them.
When they started on their journey, "we went away," says Radisson,
{213} "free from any burden, whilst those poor miserables thought
themselves happy to carry our Equipage, for the hope that they had that
we should give them a brasse ring, or an awle, or an needle."

After traveling four days, our "2 poore adventurers for the honour of
our countrey" were told that they were approaching their destination.
Runners went ahead to warn the people of their coming. "Every one
prepared to see what they never before have seene," that is, white men.

Their entry into the village was made with due pomp, and they
"destinated 3 presents, one for the men, one for the women, other for
the children, to the end," says Radisson, "that we should be spoaken of
a hundred years after, if other Europeans should not come in those
quarters." These gifts having been received with great rejoicing,
there followed feasting, powwowing in council, and a scalp-dance, all
of which occupied three days and consumed, in good Indian fashion, the
provisions which should have helped them to get through the fast
approaching winter. Accordingly, we soon read of the horrors of
famine, amid the gloomy wintry forests, the trees laden and the ground
deeply covered with snow. Radisson gives a moving description of it.
"It {214} grows wors and wors dayly. . . . Every one cryes out for
hunger. Children, you must die. ffrench, you called yourselves Gods
of the earth, that you should be feered; notwithstanding you shall tast
of the bitternesse. . . . In the morning the husband looks upon his
wife, the Brother his sister, the cozen the cozen, the Oncle the nevew,
that weare for the most part found dead." So for two or three pages he
goes on telling of the cruel suffering and of the various substitutes
for nourishing food, such as bark ground and boiled; bones that had
lain about the camp, picked clean by dogs and crows, now carefully
gathered and boiled; then "the skins that weare reserved to make us
shoose, cloath, and stokins," and at last even the skins of the tents
that covered them.

Radisson and his brother had long since eaten their dogs. About this
time "there came 2 men from a strange countrey who had a dogg" the
sight of which was very tempting. "That dogge was very leane and as
hungry as we weare." Still the sight of him was more than mortal could