April 3d they came to Montreal, where they learned that New France had
all winter suffered intolerable insolence from the Iroquois, lest
punishment of the hostiles should endanger the French at Onondaga. The
fleeing colonists waited twelve days at Montreal for the ice to clear,
and were again held back by a jam at Three Rivers; but on April 23 they
moored safely under the heights of Quebec.

_Coureurs_ from Onondaga brought word that the Mohawks had been
deceived by the pig and the ringing bell and the effigies for more than
a week. Crowing came from the chicken yard, dogs bayed in their
kennels, and when a Mohawk pulled the bell at the gate, he could hear
the sentry's measured march. At the end of seven days not a white man
had come from the fort. At first the Mohawks had thought the "black
robes" were at prayers; but now suspicions of trickery flashed on the
Iroquois. Warriors climbed the palisades and found the fort empty.
Two hundred Mohawks set out in pursuit; but the bad weather held them
back. And that was the way Radisson saved Onondaga.[9]


[1] The uncle, Pierre Esprit Radisson, is the one with whom careless
writers have confused the young hero, owing to identity of name.
Madeline Hénault has been described as the explorer's first wife,
notwithstanding genealogical impossibilities which make the explorer's
daughter thirty-six years old before he was seventeen. Even the
infallible Tanguay trips on Radisson's genealogy. I have before me the
complete record of the family taken from the parish registers of Three
Rivers and Quebec, by the indefatigable Mr. Sulte, whose explanation of
the case is this: that Radisson's mother, Madeline Hénault, first
married Sébastien Hayet, of St. Malo, to whom was born Marguerite about
1630; that her second husband was Pierre Esprit Radisson of Paris, to