So far as we at present know, there were no white men in Wisconsin during the twenty years following the coming of Nicolet. It is uncertain when the next white men came upon our soil, but there is good reason to believe that it was in the autumn of 1654. These men were Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers. Like so many others in New France, they were from the northern part of old France, and came to Canada while yet lads, Groseilliers in 1641, and Radisson ten years later. In 1653, Groseilliers married a sister of Radisson, and after that the two men became inseparable companions in their long and romantic wanderings. They experienced a number of thrilling adventures with Indians, both as traders to the forest camps of savages friendly to New France, and as prisoners in the hands of the French-hating Iroquois of New York. Nevertheless they had grown accustomed to the hard, perilous life of the wilderness, and were thoroughly in love with it. It was, as near as we can ascertain, early in the month of August, 1654, when these two adventurers started out "to discover the great lakes that they heard the wild men speak of." They followed, most of the way, in the footsteps of Nicolet, up the Ottawa River, and by the way of Lake Nipissing and French River to Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. This had now become a familiar route to the fur traders and Jesuit missionaries; but of the country west of the eastern shore of Lake Huron scarcely anything was yet known, except what vague and often fanciful reports of it were brought by the savages. Like Nicolet, our two adventurous explorers traveled by canoes, with Indians to do the paddling. Passing between the Manitoulin Islands, in the northern waters of Lake Huron, they visited and traded with the Huron Indians there, thence proceeded through the Straits of Mackinac, and across to the peninsula of Door county, which separates Green Bay from Lake Michigan. Here they spent the winter with the Pottawattomies; they held great feasts with them, at which dogs and beavers, boiled in kettles into a sort of thick soup, were the greatest delicacies; they smoked pipes of peace with them, at wordy councils which often lasted through several days; they hunted and fished with them, in a spirit of good fellowship; and, in general, they shared the fortunes of their forest friends, whether feasting or starving, after the manner of all these early French explorers and fur traders. In the curious journal afterward written in wretched but picturesque English by Radisson, he says, "We weare every where much made of; neither wanted victualls, for all the different nations that we mett conducted us & furnished us with all necessaries."