1642.J FUGITIVES. 247 



safe, built their lodges, and began to hunt the 

 moose and beaver. But a large party of their 

 enemies, with a persistent ferocity that is truly 

 astonishing, had penetrated even here, found the 

 traces of the snow-shoes, followed up their human 

 prey, and hid at nightfall among the rocks and 

 thickets around the encampment. At midnight, 

 their yells and the blows of their war-clubs 

 awakened their sleeping victims. In a few minutes 

 all were in their power. They bound the prisoners 

 hand and foot, rekindled the fire, slung the kettles, 

 cut the bodies of the slain to pieces, and boiled 

 and devoured them before the eyes of the wretched 

 survivors. " In a word," says the narriitor, " they 

 ate men with as much appetite and more pleasure 

 than hunters eat a boar or a stag." ^ 



Meanwhile they amused themselves with banter- 

 ing their prisoners. "Uncle," said one of them 

 to an old Algonquin, " you are a dead man. You 

 are going to the land of souls. Tell them to take 

 heart: they will have good company soon, for we 

 are going to send all the rest of your nation to join 

 them. This will be good news for them."^ 



This old man, who is described as no less mali- 

 cious than his captors, and even more crafty, soon 

 after escaped, and brought tidings of the disaster tc 

 the French. In the following spring, two women of 

 the party also escaped; and, after suffering almost 

 incredible hardships, reached Three Hivers, torn 

 with briers, nearly naked, and in a deplorable state 

 of bodily and mental exhaustion. One of them 



1 Vimont, Relation, 1642, 46. 2 /^/J., 45. 



