region horrible with forests. All day long, the missionaries must wade, or handle the oar. At night, there is no food for them but a scanty measure of Indian corn mixed with water; their couch is the earth or the rocks. At five-andthirty waterfalls, the canoe is to be carried on the shoulders for leagues through thickest woods, or over roughest regions; fifty times, it was dragged by hand through shallows and rapids, over sharpest stones; and thus, swimming, wading, paddling, or bearing the canoe across the portages, with garments torn, with feet mangled, yet with the breviary safely hung round the neck, and vows, as they advanced, to meet death twenty times over, if it were possible, for the honour of St. Joseph, the consecrated envoys made their way, by rivers, lakes, and forests, from Quebec to the heart of the Huron wilderness. There, to the north-west of Lake Toronto, near the shore of Lake Iroquois, which is but a bay of Lake Huron, they raised the first humble house of the Society of Jesus among the Hurons—the cradle, it was said, of his church who dwelt at Bethlehem in a cottage. The little chapel, built by aid of the axe, and consecrated to St. Joseph, where, in the gaze of thronging crowds, vespers and matins began to be chanted, and the sacred bread was consecrated by solemn mass, amazed the hereditary guardians of the council fires of the Huron tribes. Beautiful testimony to the equality of the human race! the sacred wafer, emblem of the divinity in man, all that the church offered to the princes and nobles of the European world, was shared with the humblest of the savage neophytes. The hunter, as he returned from his wide roamings, was taught to hope for eternal rest; the braves, as they came from war, were warned of the wrath which kindles against sinners a never-dying fire, fiercer far than the fires of the Mohawks; the idlers of the Indian villages were told the exciting tale of the Saviour's death for their redemption. Two new Christian villages, St. Louis and St. Ignatius, bloomed among the Huron forests. The dormant sentiment of pious veneration was awakened in many breasts, and there came to be even earnest and ascetic devotees uttering prayers and vows in the Huron tongue, -while tawny sceptics inquired, if there were indeed, in the centre of the earth, eternal flames for the unbelieving.

The missionaries themselves possessed the weaknesses and the virtues of their order. For fifteen years enduring

the infinite labours and perils of the Huron mission, and exhibiting, as it was said, "an absolute pattern of every religious virtue," Jean de Brebeuf, respecting even the nod of his distant superiors, bowed his mind and his judgment to obedience. Besides the assiduous fatigues of his office, each day, and sometimes twice in the day, he applied to himself the lash; beneath a bristling hair-shirt he wore an iron girdle, armed on all sides with projecting points; his fasts were frequent; almost always his pious vigils continued deep into the night. In vain did Asmodeus assume for him the forms of earthly beauty; his eye rested benignantly on visions of divine things. Once, imparadised in a trance, he beheld the Mother of Him whose cross he bore, surrounded by a crowd of virgins, in the beatitudes of heaven. Once, as he himself has recorded,

while engaged in penance, he saw Christ unfold his 1640. arms to embrace him with the utmost love, promising oblivion of his sins. Once, late at night, while praying in the silence, he had a vision of an infinite number of crosses, and, with mighty heart, he strove, again and again, to grasp them all. Often he saw the shapes of foul fiends, now appearing as madmen, now as raging beasts; and often he beheld the image of Death, a bloodless form, by the side of the stake, struggling with bonds, and, at last, falling, as a harmless spectre, at his feet. Having vowed to seek out suffering for the greater glory of God, he renewed that vow every day, at the moment of tasting the sacred wafer; and as his cupidity for martyrdom grew into a passion, he exclaimed, "What shall I render to thee, Jesus, my Lord, for all thy benefits? I will accept thy cup, and invoke thy name;" and, in sight of the Eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, of the most holy Mother of Christ and St. Joseph, before angels, apostles, and martyrs, before St. Ignatius and Francis Xavier, he made a vow never to decline the opportunity of martyrdom, and never to receive the death-blow but with joy.

1638.

The life of a missionary on Lake Huron was simple and uniform. The earliest hours, from four to eight, were absorbed in private prayer; the day was given to schools, visits, instruction in the catechism, and a service for proselytes. Sometimes, after the manner of St. Francis Xavier, Brebeuf would walk through the village and its environs, ringing a little bell, and inviting the Huron braves and counsellors to a conference. There, under the shady forest,

the most solemn mysteries of the Catholic faith were subjected to discussion. It was by such means that the sentiment of piety was unfolded in the breast of the great warrior Ahasistari. Nature had planted in his mind the seeds of religious faith: "Before you came to this country," he would say, "when I have incurred the greatest perils, and have alone escaped, I have said to myself, 'Some powerful spirit has the guardianship of my days;'" and he professed his belief in Jesus, as the good genius and protector, whom he had before unconsciously adored. After trials of his sincerity, he was baptized; and enlisting a troop of converts, savages like himself, "Let us strive," he exclaimed, "to make the whole world embrace the faith in Jesus."

As missionary stations multiplied, the central spot 1639. was called St. Mary's, upon the banks of the Matchedash, the pleasant watercourse which joins Lake Toronto to Huron. There, at the humble house dedicated to the Virgin, in one year, three thousand guests from the cabins of the red man received a frugal welcome.

The news from this Huron Christendom awakened in France the strongest sympathy; religious communities, in Paris and in the provinces, joined in prayers for its advancement; the king sent magnificently-embroidered garments as presents to the neophytes; the queen, the princesses of the blood, the clergy of France, even Italy listened with interest to the novel tale; and the pope himself expressed his favour. To confirm the missions, the first measure was the establishment of a college in New France; and the parents of the Marquis de Gamache, pleased with his pious importunity, assented to his entering the order of the Jesuits, and added from their ample fortunes the means of endowing a seminary for education at Quebec. Its found

ation was laid, under happy auspices, in 1635, just 1635. before Champlain passed from among the living, two years before the emigration of John Harvard, and one year before the general court of Massachusetts had made provision for a college.

The fires of charity were at the same time kindled. The Duchess d'Aiguillon, aided by her uncle, the Cardinal Richelieu, endowed a public hospital, dedicated to the Son of God, whose blood was shed in mercy for all mankind. Its doors were open, not only to the sufferers among the emigrants, but to the maimed, the sick, and the blind of

any of the numerous tribes between the Kennebec and Lake Superior; it received misfortune without asking its lineage. From the hospital nuns of Dieppe three were selected, the youngest but twenty-two, the eldest but twenty-nine, to brave the famine and the rigours of Canada in their patient missions of benevolence.

The same religious enthusiasm inspiring Madame de la Peltier, a young and opulent widow of Alençon, with the

aid of a nun from Dieppe and two others from Tours, 1639. established the Ursuline convent for the education of girls. As the youthful heroines stepped on shore at Quebec, they stooped to kiss the earth which they adopted as their country, and were ready, in case of need, to tinge with their blood. The governor, with the little garrison, received them at the water's edge; Hurons and Algonquins, joining in the shouts, filled the air with yells of joy; and the motley group escorted the new comers to the church, where, amidst a general thanksgiving, the Te Deum was chanted. Is it wonderful that the natives were touched by a benevolence which their poverty and squalid misery could not appal? Their education was also attempted; and the venerable ash-tree still lives, beneath which Mary of the Incarnation, so famed for chastened piety, genius, and good judgment, toiled, though in vain, for the culture of Huron children.

Meantime, a colony of the Hurons had been esta1637. blished in the vicinity of Quebec; and the name of Silleri is the monument to the philanthropy of its projector. Here savages were to be trained to the faith and the manners of civilization.

Of Montreal, selected to be a nearer rendezvous, 1640. for converted Indians, possession was taken in 1640, 42 by a solemn mass, celebrated beneath a tent. In the

following February, in France, at the cathedral of 1641. Our Lady of Paris, a general supplication was made that the Queen of Angels would take the island of Montreal under her protection. In August of the same year, in the presence of the French gathered from all parts of Canada, and of the native warriors summoned from the wilderness, the festival of the Assumption was solemnized on the island itself. Henceforward, the hearth of the sacred fires of the Wyandots was consecrated to the Virgin. "There the Mohawk and the feebler Algonquin," said Le Jeune, "shall make their home; the wolf

shall dwell with the lamb, and a little child shall guide them."

1641- Yet the occupation of Montreal did not imme1644. diately produce nearer relations with the Huron missionaries, who, for a period of three years, received no supplies whatever, -so that their clothes fell in pieces; they had no wine for the chalice but the juices of the wild grape, and scarce bread enough for consecration. Yet the efforts of the Jesuits were not limited even to the 1634- Huron race. Within thirteen years, this remote wil1647. derness was visited by forty-two missionaries, members of the Society of Jesus, besides eighteen others, who, if not initiated, were yet chosen men, ready to shed their blood for their faith. Twice or thrice a year, they all assembled at St. Mary's; for the rest of the time they were scattered through the infidel tribes.

I would willingly trace their progress, as they gradually surveyed the coast of our republic, from the waters of the "Unghiara," or, as we write it, the Niagara, to the head of Lake Superior; but their narratives do but incidentally blend description with their details of conversions. Yet the map which was prepared by the order, at Paris, in 1660, proves that, in this earliest period, they had traced the highway of waters from Lake Erie to Lake Superior, and had gained a glimpse, at least, of Lake Michigan.

1638, Within six years after the recovery of Canada, the 1639. plan was formed of establishing missions, not only among the Algonquins in the north, but south of Lake Huron, in Michigan, and at Green Bay; thus to gain access to the immense regions of the west and the northwest, to the great multitude from all nations, whom no one can number; but the Jesuits were too feeble, and too few, to attempt the spiritual conquest of so many countries: they pray for recruits; they invoke the blessing of the Divine Majesty on their thoughts and enterprises.

At the various missions, Indians from the remotest points appeared. In 1638, there came to the Huron mission a chief of the Huron tribe that dwelt on the head waters of the Ohio; and we find constant mention of Algonquins from the west, especially from Green Bay.

In the autumn of 1640, Charles Raymbault and Claude Pijart reached the Huron missions, destined for service among the Algonquins of the north and the west. By