the water side. The walls were of unbarked logs, the roof of thatched
branches interlaced, with the door at the river side. In the middle of
the earth floor, so that the smoke would curl up where the branches
formed a funnel or chimney, was the fire. On the right of the fire,
two hewn logs overlaid with pine boughs made a bed. On the left,
another hewn log acted as a table. Jumbled everywhere, hanging from
branches and knobs of branches, were the firearms, clothing, and
merchandise of the two fur traders. Naturally, a fort two thousand
miles from help needed sentries. Radisson had not forgotten his
boyhood days of Onondaga. He strung carefully concealed cords through
the grass and branches around the fort. To these bells were fastened,
and the bells were the sentries. The two white men could now sleep
soundly without fear of approach. This fort, from which sprang the
buoyant, aggressive, prosperous, free life of the Great Northwest, was
founded and built and completed in two days.

The West had begun.[4]

It was a beginning which every Western pioneer was to repeat for the
next two hundred years: first, the log cabins; then, the fight with the
wilderness for food.

Radisson, being the younger, went into the woods to hunt, while
Groseillers kept house. Wild geese and ducks were whistling south, but
"the whistling that I made," writes Radisson, "was another music than
theirs; for I killed three and scared the rest." Strange Indians came
through the forest, but were not admitted to the tiny fort, lest
knowledge of the traders' weakness should tempt theft. Many a night
the explorers were roused by a sudden ringing of the bells or crashing
through the underbrush, to find that wild animals had been attracted by