22 Inasmuch 



ed the crossing. In mid-stream the canoe, 

 heavily overladen, was crushed between the 

 floes; scrambling out upon a large cake they 

 drifted rapidly down stream with the good 

 fortune that the piece upon which they had taken 

 refuge was struck forcibly by a large mass and 

 driven on shore ; when they landed they fell upon 

 and devoured the putrid and rotten carcass of an 

 animal which had been thrown outside the fort. 

 Torture of The Red-men will ever be associated with the 



Prisoners torments and atrocious cruelties they inflicted 

 upon their prisoners of war. Champlain wrote of 

 the torture of an Iroquois captive: &quot;They com- 

 manded him to sing if he had any courage : which 

 he did, but it was a sorry song to hear. Mean 

 while our men lighted a fire, and when it was 

 blazing well, each one took a brand and burned 

 this poor wretch little by little, to make him suffer 

 greater torment. Sometimes they stopped a nd 

 threw water on his back. Then they tore out his 

 nails and put the fire on the ends of his fingers. 

 Afterwards they flayed the top of his head and 

 dripped on top of it a kind of gum all hot; then 

 they pierced his arms near the wrists and with 

 sticks pulled the sinews, and when they saw 

 that they could not get them, they cut them. 

 The poor wretch uttered strange cries, and I 

 pitied him when I saw him treated in this way; 

 and yet he showed such endurance th#t one 

 would have said that, at times, he did not feel 

 any pain. They strongly urged me to take some 

 Ire and do ft they were doing, but I explained 



