of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa.[3] Once they heard guns.  Turning a bend in the river, they discovered five Iroquois boats, just in time to avoid them.  That night the Frenchman, Lariviere, dreamed that he had been captured by the Mohawks, and he shouted out in such terror that the alarmed Indians rushed to embark.  The next day they again came on the trail of Iroquois.  The frightened Indians from the Upper Country shouldered their canoes and dashed through the woods.  Lariviere could not keep up and was afraid to go back from the river lest he should lose his bearings.  Fighting his way over windfall and rock, he sank exhausted and fell asleep.  Far ahead of the Iroquois boats the Upper Country Indians came together again.  The Frenchman was nowhere to be found.  It was dark.  The Indians would not wait to search.  Radisson and Groseillers dared not turn back to face the irate governor.  Lariviere was abandoned.  Two weeks afterwards some French hunters found him lying on the rocks almost dead from starvation.  He was sent back to Three Rivers, where D’Avaugour had him imprisoned.  This outrage the inhabitants of Three Rivers resented.  They forced the jail and rescued Lariviere.

Three days after the loss of Lariviere Radisson and Groseillers caught up with seven more canoes of Indians from the Upper Country.  The union of the two bands was just in time, for the next day they were set upon at a portage by the Iroquois.  Ordering the Indians to encase themselves in bucklers of matting and buffalo hide, Radisson led the assault on the Iroquois barricade.  Trees were cut down, and the Upper Indians rushed the rude fort with timbers extemporized into battering-rams.  In close range of the enemy, Radisson made a curious discovery.  Frenchmen were directing the Iroquois warriors.  Who had sent these French to intercept the explorers?  If Radisson suspected treachery on the part of jealous rivals from Quebec, it must have redoubled his fury; for the Indians from the Upper Country threw themselves in the breached barricade with such force that the Iroquois lost heart and tossed belts of wampum over the stockades to supplicate peace.  It was almost night.  Radisson’s Indians drew off to consider the terms of peace.  When morning came, behold an empty fort!  The French renegades had fled with their Indian allies.

[Illustration:  Chateau St. Louis, Quebec, 1669, from one of the oldest prints in existence.]

Glad to be rid of the first hindrance, the explorers once more sped north.  In the afternoon, Radisson’s scouts ran full tilt into a band of Iroquois laden with beaver pelts.  The Iroquois were smarting from their defeat of the previous night; and what was Radisson’s amusement to see his own scouts and the Iroquois running from each other in equal fright, while the ground between lay strewn with booty!  Radisson rushed his Indians for the waterside to intercept the Iroquois’ flight.  The Iroquois left their boats and swam for the opposite shore, where they threw up the usual barricade and entrenched themselves to shoot on Radisson’s passing canoes.  Using the captured beaver pelts as shields, the Upper Indians ran the gantlet of the Iroquois fire with the loss of only one man.