Ever deeper, deeper, deeper Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, Fell the covering snow, and drifted Through the forest, round the village. There are the pitiful cries of the helpless, starving ones, O the wailing of the children! O the anguish of the women! There is the hunter engaged in his bootless quest, {216} Vainly walked he through the forest, Sought for bird or beast and found none, Saw no track of deer or rabbit, In the snow beheld no footprints. Then came the two dread visitors, Famine and Fever, and fixed their awful gaze on Minnehaha, who Lay there trembling, freezing, burning At the looks they cast upon her, At the fearful words they uttered. Out into the forest rushes Hiawatha, crying frantically to Heaven, "Give me food for Minnehaha, For my dying Minnehaha!" Through the far-resounding forest, Through the forest vast and vacant Rang the cry of desolation, But there came no other answer Than the echo of the woodlands, "Minnehaha! Minnehaha!" All the day he roamed the gloomy depths of the wintry woods, still vainly seeking food. When he came home empty-handed, heavy-hearted, lo! the spirit of Minnehaha had fled to the Islands of the Blessed. Her body they laid in the snow, In the forest deep and darksome, Underneath the moaning hemlocks. {217} The singularly vivid descriptions of Indian life, with its alternations of human affection and fiendish cruelty, of daring and cowardice, of gorging and starving, make one of the most interesting features of Radisson's book. He lived the life himself and left such a picture of it as few white men could have drawn. Accordingly, he soon tells of feasting once more. What broke the famine was a storm of wind and rain that caused the snow to fall from the trees, cleared the forests, and formed, after a freeze, a crust on the snow that enabled the hunters to kill an abundance of game. Deer, with their sharp hoofs, broke through the crust "after they made 7 or 8 capers" (bounds), and were easily taken. There was other food, too, for there came a deputation of Indians to visit the white strangers, accompanied by their women "loaded of Oates, corne that growes in that country." He means wild rice, which formed the staple food of certain tribes. This was a gift, and at its presentation there were elaborate ceremonies, the account of which fills several pages. Still this was only the beginning, for the appointed time for a grand council was approaching, and soon there arrived deputations from eighteen different tribes, until five hundred {218} warriors were assembled. More feasting, more ceremonies, more honors to the white visitors, who received more beaver-skins than they could possibly carry away, and pledges of eternal friendship on both sides.