Early in the history of Fort Nassau, a party of three adventurous traders, led by one “Kleynties,” penetrated deep into the hinterland. Travelling west up the Mohawk Valley, they appear to have stumbled upon the headwaters of the Susquehanna River and eventually to have reached Carantouan, a palisaded town of the Susquehannock Indians. Carantouan, now known as Spanish Hill, was just south of the present-day border between New York and Pennsylvania. It was built about the terraced slopes of a gigantic mound. The platter-like top of this mound with its man-made entrenchments was said by the Indians to have been occupied once by awesome spirits who spoke with thunder and killed men by making holes through their bodies. The spirits could have been sixteenth century Spanish explorers from Chesapeake Bay taking refuge there while searching for gold. Only a short time before the advent of the three Dutchmen in this vicinity Carantouan had been visited by a Frenchman, Etienne Brule. With a delegation of Hurons he safely traversed the country of the Five Nations to reach this stronghold of the Susquehannocks in 1615. He wanted them as allies for Champlain’s pending attack on Fort Onondaga. Like the Hurons, the Susquehannocks were kinsmen but bitter enemies of the Five Nations, and they agreed readily enough to help in the attack. However their war dances took too long and they arrived too late--after Champlain’s defeat. Etienne Brule returned to Carantouan with his savage friends to do a bit of bartering and to examine into the possibilities of extending the fur trade of Canada to the Susquehanna. In fact he descended the length of that river into the upper waters of Chesapeake Bay. But because of the temperate climate there he took it to be the coast of Spanish Florida and discreetly turned back. [Illustration: THE MERCHANTS FILLED THEIR COFFERS, WHILE THE INDIANS ACQUIRED GUNS.] After his return up the river to Carantouan, Brule set out for home. This time he was captured in the country of the Five Nations. When those savages discovered he was a Frenchman, they plucked his beard hair by hair, tore his nails loose with their teeth, and staked him out for fire-brand torture. But then, just before it was too late, Brule mysteriously won their favor, was roundly feted, and in the end was permitted to escape back to Huron lands. In 1618 he made his way to Three Rivers in Canada, where Champlain at the time was driving a trade for beaver pelts with the Indians, and there he reported his discoveries. However, getting through the Iroquois country to Carantouan--and getting back to Canada--had been a dangerous exploit, one that not many French traders would desire to emulate, not unless Champlain first brought the Five Nations to complete submission by force of arms. That, of course, the great French captain was never able to do; if he had, probably the French would have overrun the valleys of the Susquehanna, the Delaware and the Hudson.