| OCR Text |
Show 262 TilE LIJ.Y ANO T ilE TOTEM. traffic for food with the surrounding tribes. The Indians were uot averse to listen. But they knew the distress under which the Frenchmen suffered, and were prepared to turn it to account. ~.l.'hcy came into the garrison with small supplies of grain and fish, enough to provoke appetite rather than to satisfy it. For these they demanded such enormous prices, o..s, if conceded, would have soon exhausted all the merchandise of the garrison. With OM ha.nd they extended their produce, while the other was stretched for the equivalent required. Knowing the desperation of the Frenchmen, they took care, while thus buta.lizing their hopes and hunger, to keep out of 1·eaeh of shot of arquebus~. In this way, they took the very shirts from the backs of the starving soldiers. When Laudonnicrc remonstrated against their prices, their answer was a bitter mockery. "Very good," said the ijnvages, "if thou make such great account of thy merchandise, let it stay thy hunger. Do thou eat of it and we will cat of our fish." This reply would be cheered with their open-throated laughter. The old ally of the Freuch, the Paracoussi Utina, mocked them in like manner. His subjects followed his cxa.mplc ; and, in the end, goaded to madness, Lau· donuierc resolved on adopting the course which his people had counselled; that, by which, taking one of their kings prisoner, food could be cxtorkld for his ransom. The ingratitude of Utiua, for past services, a recent attempt \vhich he had made to employ the French soldiers in his own conquests, while professing to lead them only where they should find provisions, and the supposed extent of Lis resources, pointed him out to all parties as the proper person upon whom to try the experiment, on a small scale, which Corklz and l'izzarro had used, on a large one, in tho con· quest of Peru and Mexico. I XIX. Ot lho O&Jithity otlho Great Pa.aeouii-O!ata Ouuc Ul!u., aad lbo war wbleb followed ht .. ·ooDhlopeoploaadtbo Fr-neb. CHAPTER I. It being determined by Laudonnierc, in the necessities of his people, to seize upon the person of the great Purncoussi, Olata Ouvae Utina, in order, by the ransom w!Jich he should extort, to relieve the famine which prevailed among the garrison, he proceeded to make his preparations for the event. T wo of his barks were put in order for this purpose, and a select body of fifty men was chosen from his ranks to accompany him on tho expedition. But this select body, though the very best men of the garrison, exhibited but few external proofs of their adequacy for the enterprise. So lean of flesh, so shrunk of sinew, so hollow-eyed were they, that their picture rccals to us the description given by Shakspcarc of the famished and skeleton regiments of Henry of Monmouth at the famous field of Agincourt-1 A poor and starved band,' the very 1 shales and husks of men,' with scarcely blood enough in all their vcius, to stain the Indian hatchet, which they travel to provoke. But famine endows the siuews with a l'igor of its own. Hunger euforced to the last extremities of nature, clothes the spirit of the man in the |
