It was unnecessary for Groseillers to say more.  The ambition of young Radisson took fire.  Long ago, when a captive among the Mohawks, he had cherished boyish dreams that it was to be his “destiny to discover many wild nations”; and here was that destiny opening the door for him, pointing the way, beckoning to the toils and dangers and glories of the discoverer’s life.  Radisson had been tortured among the Mohawks and besieged among the Onondagas.  Groseillers had been among the Huron missions that were destroyed and among the Algonquin canoes that were attacked.  Both explorers knew what perils awaited them; but what youthful blood ever chilled at prospect of danger when a single coup might win both wealth and fame?  Radisson had not been home one month; but he had no sooner heard the plan than he “longed to see himself in a boat.”

A hundred and fifty Algonquins had come down the Ottawa from the Great Beyond shortly after Radisson returned from Onondaga.  Six of these Algonquins had brought their furs to Three Rivers.  Some emissaries had gone to Quebec to meet the governor; but the majority of the Indians remained at Montreal to avoid the ambuscade of the Mohawks on Lake St. Peter.  Radisson and Groseillers were not the only Frenchmen conspiring to wrest fame and fortune from the Upper Country.  When the Indians came back from Quebec, they were accompanied by thirty young French adventurers, gay as boys out of school or gold hunters before the first check to their plans.  There were also two Jesuits sent out to win the new domain for the cross.[5] As ignorant as children of the hardships ahead, the other treasure-seekers kept up nonchalant boasting that roused the irony of such seasoned men as Radisson and Groseillers.  “What fairer bastion than a good tongue,” Radisson demands cynically, “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