300 THE SCOURGE OF CANADA. [1692. 



the enemy were not far off: ; but cold, hunger, and 

 fatigue had overcome the courage of the pursuers, 

 and the young commander saw his followers on 

 the point of deserting him. He called them to- 

 gether, and harangued them in terms so animating 

 that they caught his spirit, and again pushed on. 

 For four hours more they followed the tracks of 

 the Iroquois snow-shoes, till they found the savages 

 in their bivouac, set upon them, and killed or cap- 

 tured nearly all. There was a French slave among 

 them, scarcely distinguishable from his owners. It 

 was an officer named La Plante, taken at La Chine 

 three years before. " He would have been killed 

 like his masters," says La Hontan, " if he had not 

 cried out with all his might, ' Misericorde, sauvez- 

 moi, je sals Fram;aisy i Beaucour brought his 

 prisoners to Quebec, where Frontenac ordered that 

 two of them should be burned. One stabbed him- 

 self in prison ; the other was tortured by the Chris- 

 tian Hurons on Cape Diamond, defying them to 

 the last. Nor was this the only instance of such 

 fearful reprisal. In the same ^year, a number of Iro- 

 quois captured by Vauclreuil were burned at Mon- 

 treal at the demand of the Canadians and the mission 

 Indians, who insisted that their cruelties should be 

 paid back in kind. It is said that the purpose was 

 answered, and the Iroquois deterred for a while 

 from torturing their captives. 2 



The brunt of the war fell on the upper half of 



1 La.Potherie, III. 156 ; Relation de ce qui s'est passe de plus conside- 

 rable en Canada, 1691, 1692 ; La Hontan, I. 233. 



2 Relation, 1682-1712. 



