One of the incomprehensible things to civilization is how a white man can degenerate to savagery.  Young Radisson’s life is an illustration.  In the first transports of his freedom, with the Mohawk women dancing and singing around him, the men shouting, he leaped up, oblivious of pain; but when the flush of ecstasy had passed, he sank to the mat of the Iroquois lodge, and he was unable to use his burned feet for more than a month.  During this time the Iroquois dressed his wounds, brought him the choice portions of the hunt, gave him clean clothing purchased at Orange (Albany), and attended to his wants as if he had been a prince.  No doubt the bright eyes of the swarthy young French boy moved to pity the hearts of the Mohawk mothers, and his courage had won him favor among the warriors.  He was treated like a king.  The women waited upon him like slaves, and the men gave him presents of firearms and ammunition—­the Indian’s most precious possessions.  Between flattered vanity and indolence, other white men, similarly treated, have lost their self-respect.  Beckworth, of the Missouri, became to all intents and purposes a savage; and Bird, of the Blackfeet, degenerated lower than the Indians.  Other Frenchmen captured from the St. Lawrence, and white women taken from the New England colonies, became so enamored of savage life that they refused to leave the Indian lodges when peace had liberated them.  Not so Radisson.  Though only seventeen, flattered vanity never caused him to forget the gratitude he owed the Mohawk family.  Though he relates his life with a frankness that leaves nothing untold, he never at any time returned treachery for kindness.  The very chivalry of the French nature endangered him all the more.  Would he forget his manhood, his birthright of a superior race, his inheritance of nobility from a family that stood foremost among the noblesse of New France?

[Illustration:  Albany, from an Old Print.]

The spring of 1653 came with unloosening of the rivers and stirring of the forest sap and fret of the warrior blood.  Radisson’s Iroquois father held great feasts in which he heaved up the hatchet to break the kettle of sagamite against all enemies.  Would Radisson go on the war-path with the braves, or stay at home with the women and so lose the respect of the tribe?  In the hope of coming again within reach of Three Rivers, he offered to join the Iroquois in their wars.  The Mohawks were delighted with his spirit, but they feared to lose their young warrior.  Accepting his offer, they refused to let him accompany them to Quebec, but assigned him to a band of young braves, who were to raid the border-lands between the Huron country of the Upper Lakes and the St. Lawrence.  This was not what Radisson wanted, but he could not draw back.  There followed months of wild wanderings round the regions of Niagara.  The band of young braves passed dangerous places with great precipices