"especially when one sees his own chimney smoke? . . . It is different
when food is wanting, work necessary day and night, sleep taken on the
bare ground or to mid-waist in water, with an empty stomach, weariness
in the bones, and bad weather overhead."

Giving the slip to their noisy companions, Radisson and Groseillers
stole out from Three Rivers late one night in June, accompanied by
Algonquin guides. Travelling only at night to avoid Iroquois spies,
they came to Montreal in three days. Here were gathered one hundred
and forty Indians from the Upper Country, the thirty French, and the
two priests. No gun was fired at Montreal, lest the Mohawks should get
wind of the departure; and the flotilla of sixty canoes spread over
Lake St. Louis for the far venture of the _Pays d'en Haut_. Three days
of work had silenced the boasting of the gay adventurers; and the
_voyageurs_, white and red, were now paddling in swift silence. Safety
engendered carelessness. As the fleet seemed to be safe from Iroquois
ambush, the canoes began to scatter. Some loitered behind. Hunters
went ashore to shoot. The hills began to ring with shot and call. At
the first _portage_ many of the canoes were nine and ten miles apart.
Enemies could have set on the Algonquins in some narrow defile and
slaughtered the entire company like sheep in a pen. Radisson and
Groseillers warned the Indians of the risk they were running. Many of
these Algonquins had never before possessed firearms. With the muskets
obtained in trade at Three Rivers, they thought themselves invincible
and laughed all warning to scorn. Radisson and Groseillers were told
that they were a pair of timid squaws; and the canoes spread apart till
not twenty were within call. As they skirted the wooded shores, a man
suddenly dashed from the forest with an upraised war-hatchet in one
hand and a blanket streaming from his shoulders. He shouted for them
to come to him. The Algonquins were panic-stricken. Was the man