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Accordingly, we soon read of the horrors of famine, amid the gloomy wintry forests, the trees laden and the ground deeply covered with snow. Radisson gives a moving description of it. "It grows wors and wors dayly. . . . Every one cryes out for hunger.
They are the coursedest, unablest, the unfamous & cowarliest people that I have seene amongst fower score nations that I have frequented. O yee poore people, you shall have their booty, but you shall pay dearly for it! Every one cryes out for hungar; the women become baren, and drie like wood. You men must eate the cord, being you have no more strength to make use of the bow.
The meane while that we are there, arrived above a thousand that had not ben there but for those two redoubted nations that weare to see them doe what they never before had, a difference which was executed with a great deale of mirth. I ffor feare of being inuied I will obmitt onely that there weare playes, mirths, and bataills for sport, goeing and coming with cryes; each plaid his part.
Att ye council even soe ye dogg had walked into ye centre of ye great cabbin, there saying loudly to ye Elders what he was & that he must be heard. His voice must be obeyed. His was not ye mocking cryes of a witch from under an olde snake-skin, butt a chief come from Paradise to comfort his own people. My father asked me if I was agreed.
Att the brake of day we cooked what could accommodate us, and flung the rest away. The greatest marke of our victory was that we had 10 heads & foure prisoners, whom we embarqued in hopes to bring them into our countrey, and there to burne them att our owne leasures for the more satisfaction of our wives. We left that place of masacre with horrid cryes.
In 3 dayes' time there arrived eighten severall nations, and came privatly, to have done the sooner. As we became to the number of 500, we held a councell. Then the shouts and cryes and the encouragments weare proclaimed, that a fort should be builded. They went about the worke and made a large fort. It was about 603 score paces in lenght and 600 in breadth, so that it was a square.
I wrote to my father this night, but the post-house being burned, the letter could not go. 5th. I lay down in the office again upon W. Hewer's, quilt, being mighty weary, and sore in my feet with going till I was hardly able to stand. About two in the morning my wife calls me up and tells me of new cryes of fire, it being come to Barkeing Church, which is the bottom of our lane.
The boat of the sorcerors where was one of us, albeit made a voyage into the hurrons' country before with the ffathers, it was not usefull, soe we made him embark another, but stayed not there long. The night following, he that was in the boat dreamed that the Iroquoits had taken him with the rest. In his dreame he cryes out aloud; those that weare att rest awakes of the noise.
The exclamations, hoopings and cryes, songs and dances, signifies nothing but the murdering and killing, and the intended victory that they will have the next yeare, which is in the beginning of Spring. In those feasts my father heaves up his hattchett against the Algonquins.
And we found since by experience, that the lesser sort of dogges they feede fatte, and keepe them as domesticall cattell in their tents for their eating, and the greater sort serue for the vse of drawing their sleds. And then with great noise and cryes, ceased not wondring, thinking that we could make men liue or die at our pleasure.
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