they were at the gateway of the Great Beyond, where no white man had
yet gone.

The first thing done on taking up winter quarters on Green Bay was to
appease the friends of those warriors slain by the Mohawks. A
distribution of gifts had barely dried up the tears of mourning when
news came of Iroquois on the war-path. Radisson did not wait for fear
to unman the Algonquin warriors. Before making winter camp, he offered
to lead a band of volunteers against the marauders. For two days he
followed vague tracks through the autumn-tinted forests. Here were
markings of the dead leaves turned freshly up; there a moccasin print
on the sand; and now the ashes of a hidden camp-fire lying in almost
imperceptible powder on fallen logs told where the Mohawks had
bivouacked. On the third day Radisson caught the ambushed band
unprepared, and fell upon the Iroquois so furiously that not one
escaped.

After that the Indians of the Upper Country could not do too much for
the white men. Radisson and Groseillers were conducted from camp to
camp in triumph. Feasts were held. Ambassadors went ahead with gifts
from the Frenchmen; and companies of women marched to meet the
explorers, chanting songs of welcome. "But our mind was not to stay
here," relates Radisson, "but to know the remotest people; and, because
we had been willing to die in their defence, these Indians consented to
conduct us."

Before the opening of spring, 1659, Radisson and Groseillers had been
guided across what is now Wisconsin to "a mighty river, great, rushing,
profound, and comparable to the St. Lawrence." [7] On the shores of
the river they found a vast nation--"the people of the fire," prairie