The great explorer Hudson, however, did not appear on the scene till 1610, and his first appearance was his last. Passing through the strait, he rounded the north point of Labrador, and, turning southward, sailed out upon a body of water so vast that three months’ exploration left the work unfinished; but it was pretty clear that no way through to the Pacific existed in that direction. Caught by winter at the south end of the Bay, Hudson and his crew landed and put up wooden shelters, where they spent an unhappy eight months. They failed to lay in a stock of game, and when the breaking ice set the ship free, in the middle of June, food was running terribly short. The homeward voyage had barely started when mutineers laid hold of their captain, his young son and half a dozen others, and set them adrift in a boat. The few who survived, when the ship reached England at last, professed to believe that Hudson meant to leave them behind in the Bay if they had not played the trick first, as there was not food enough to keep all alive. Nothing was heard again of the great explorer, though ships were sent in search; but the sea that he won for a grave still bears the modest name of Hudson Bay. [Illustration] _Towing through the Ice—1600_ Many a brave man after that met his death in the icy chaos, trying to find the North-west Passage to Asia. There were some, however, who had another aim—they saw in Hudson Strait and Bay a new way to the heart of North America, a way by which the wealth of the great North-west might be drained off to England, in spite of the French who barred the St. Lawrence route. Curiously enough, it was a couple of Frenchmen, named Radisson and Groseillers, who led the English in through this unguarded door. The first French settlers on the St. Lawrence made friends of the Indians living there, the Hurons and Algonquins, and helped them to fight their enemies, the Iroquois. For many years, therefore, the Iroquois were constantly attacking the French, who could not even cultivate their little fields around the river-side towns without muskets slung over their shoulders. Even so, many of them were killed, and most of those taken alive were cruelly tortured. At the village of Three Rivers, between Quebec and Montreal, lived Pierre Radisson. One spring morning in 1652, when he was about seventeen, he went out hunting, and was captured by a party of redskins in ambush. His life was spared, for an Indian and his wife took a fancy to him, adopted him as their son, and took him with them on their wanderings. He escaped, along with an Algonquin fellow-prisoner; but only by killing three Iroquois. He was captured again, and tortured; his feet were so badly burnt that he was lame for a month; but his Indian “father and mother” ransomed him with gifts to the head men of the tribe, and as he was a brave young fellow and a “good mixer” he became quite popular with his redskinned companions.