“In the name of Louis the Great, King of France,” he shouted, “in the name of His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France, I take possession of all these regions!”

At that, Chouart Groseillers shivered a bottle of wine against the flag-pole.  Drums beat, fifes shrieked as for battle, and lusty cheers for the king and Sieur Radisson rang and echoed and re-echoed from our crews.  Three times did Allemand beat his drum and three times did we cheer.  Then Pierre Radisson raised his sword.  Every man dropped to knee.  Catholics and Protestants, Calvinists and infidels, and riff-raff adventurers who had no religion but what they swore by, bowed their heads to the solemn thanks which Pierre Radisson uttered for safe deliverance from perilous voyage. [1]

That was my first experience of the fusion which the New World makes of Old World divisions.  We thought we had taken possession of the land.  No, no, ’twas the land had taken possession of us, as the New World ever does, fusing ancient hates and rearing a new race, of which—­I wot—­no prophet may dare too much!

“He who twiddles his thumbs may gnaw his gums,” M. Radisson was wont to say; and I assure you there was no twiddling of thumbs that morning.  Bare had M. Radisson finished prayers, when he gave sharp command for Groseillers, his brother-in-law, to look to the building of the Habitation—­as the French called their forts—­while he himself would go up-stream to seek the Indians for trade.  Jean and Godefroy and I were sent to the ship for a birch canoe, which M. Radisson had brought from Quebec.

Our leader took the bow; Godefroy, the stern; Jean and I, the middle.  A poise of the steel-shod steering pole, we grasped our paddles, a downward dip, quick followed by Godefroy at the stern, and out shot the canoe, swift, light, lithe, alert, like a racer to the bit, with a gurgling of waters below the gunwales, the keel athrob to the swirl of a turbulent current and a trail of eddies dimpling away on each side.  A sharp breeze sprang up abeam, and M. Radisson ordered a blanket sail hoisted on the steersman’s fishing-pole.  But if you think that he permitted idle paddles because a wind would do the work, you know not the ways of the great explorer.  He bade us ply the faster, till the canoe sped between earth and sky like an arrow shot on the level.  The shore-line became a blur.  Clumps of juniper and pine marched abreast, halted the length of time an eye could rest, and wheeled away.  The swift current raced to meet us.  The canoe jumped to mount the glossy waves raised by the beam wind.  An upward tilt of her prow, and we had skimmed the swell like a winged thing.  And all the while M. Radisson’s eyes were everywhere.  Chips whirled past.  There were beaver, he said.  Was the water suddenly muddied?  Deer had flitted at our approach.  Did a fish rise?  M. Radisson predicted otter; and where there were otter and beaver and deer, there should be Indians.