They were collected with a design for a Lord High Admiral such as he
should approve; but those times are not yet come, and so little care was
taken of them that they were redeemed from thus et adores vendentibus."
The manuscript containing Radisson's narrative for the years 1682 and 1683
was "purchased of Rodd, 8th July, 1839," by the British Museum. The
narrative in French, for the year 1684, was bought by Sir Hans Sloane from
the collection of "Nicolai Joseph Foucault, Comitis Consistoriani," as his
bookplate informs us. With the manuscript this gentleman had bound up in
the same volume a religious treatise in manuscript, highly illuminated, in
Italian, relating to some of the saints of the Catholic Church. [Footnote:
I am under obligations to Mr. John Gilmary Shea for valuable information.]
VOYAGES
OF
PETER ESPRIT RADISSON.
The Relation of my Voyage, being in Bondage in the Lands of the Irokoits,
which was the next yeare after my coming into Canada, in the yeare 1651,
the 24th day of May.
Being persuaded in the morning by two of my comrades to go and recreat
ourselves in fowling, I disposed myselfe to keepe them Company; wherfor I
cloathed myselfe the lightest way I could possible, that I might be the
nimbler and not stay behinde, as much for the prey that I hoped for, as for
to escape the danger into which wee have ventered ourselves of an enemy the
cruelest that ever was uppon the face of the Earth.
