Crossing Lake Simcoe, Champlain and his followers travelled slowly and with much hardship through the country north of Lake Ontario, until by this very roundabout route the whole party came in a month's time to the fort of the Onondagas, which they intended to attack. As they drew near, the French {38} and Indians fell in with outlying bands of this tribe, capturing many prisoners. Champlain strove unceasingly to induce his Huron allies to show mercy to the captives, but the Indian warrior always deemed mercy a pitiful sign of weakness. He wanted not only to cut off the hands and feet of the male prisoners, gouge out their eyes and burn them alive, but to torture the women and children as well. Only was it when Champlain threatened to withdraw his French soldiers altogether that the Huron chiefs consented to confine their barbarities to the men alone. When the allies got closer to the Onondaga fort they found it was much more strongly defended than they had supposed. It consisted of four rows of strong stakes, and a thick wall made of heavy branches of trees. On the top of this wall were gutters of wood to conduct water to any part which the enemy should set on fire. The water was drawn from a small pond inside the fortification, where all the Onondagas were assembled in little houses, having a large store of bows and arrows, stones and hatchets. Provisions, too, were plentiful, for the Indian harvest was just over. Champlain saw at once that to take such a fort was not an easy task, and advised his Indian allies to be prudent. But the young Hurons were foolhardy and rushed at the four-fold palisade with ear-splitting war-whoops, flourishing their tomahawks. The consequence was as Champlain foresaw: they were shot down or killed by a shower of stones by the enemy. After a time, when they had lost heavily, the Hurons were ready to listen to reason. A plan was devised. In the {39} night-time Champlain had a high wooden platform built; upon it he placed several of his musketeers so that they could fire into the fort, while 300 Hurons were stationed close by to set fire to the palisade. These measures might have succeeded, but the wind unluckily was in the wrong direction and blew the flames of the Huron torches away from the fort. Champlain himself, while trying to make the unruly Hurons obey his orders, was twice wounded, and many of his followers were killed. Then it was that the foolish Huron chiefs became disheartened. They lost faith in the "Man -with -the -Iron -Breast" and decided to give up the attempt and retreat homewards before the winter set in. In vain Champlain besought them; they were obdurate. As it was, when they got to the place, eighty miles away, where their canoes had been left, high winds and snowstorms had begun, and their wounded, including Champlain, suffered much. Solemnly had they promised the French leader that after the attack on the Iroquois they would carry him down the St.