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Pathfinders of the West - Being the Thrilling Story of the Adventures of the Men Who - Discovered the Great Northwest: Radisson, La Vérendrye, - Lewis and Clark by Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
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could not miss the opportunity of approaching the Bay of the North.
For two days he marched with the hunters, enduring torture at every
step. The third day he could go no farther and they deserted him.
Groseillers had gone hunting with another band of Crees. Radisson had
neither gun nor hatchet, and the Indians left him only ten pounds of
pemmican. After a short rest he journeyed painfully on, following the
trail of the marching Crees. On the fifth day he found the frame of a
deserted wigwam. Covering 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
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