Imogen.

No wonder they who love the established church should fix their special admiration on the feature of her simplicity. The act of uniformity enforced by Procrustes was as simple a process, and with as simple a result. In both cases, it was a cutting down, paring away, shortening, disjointing, dislocating. Only, as they who decreed the form and measurements of the new religion, unlike Procrustes, had to reconstruct as well as simply to wrench and amputate, they added that other process to their labor; and under difficulties which have excited the compassion of their disciples in all later time for a system of theology and theological devotion is as complex and delicate, to say the least, as the human frame: you cannot give back the sinews and organs you have removed, nor restore action to the joints you have sundered. We have lived to see the result of such simplifying as went on in the sixteenth century. After a career which has given time for irreconcilable schools to exhibit their full divergence, the communion so arranged seems likely to fall to pieces on the very question of ritualism. "We never, sir," says a popular clerical writer to theTimesnewspaper, "we never shall have peace again in the church until some plain order of conducting the service is made more or less imperative, confused rubrics relaid down in clear language, and some court established, easy of access, cheap, and speedy in process, by which it may be adjudged, as well in the case of clergy as of bishops, whether the parties accused of false teaching or false practice are guilty according to a rational, legal interpretation of our formularies in the spirit in which for three centuries they have been conducted." [Footnote 29]

[Footnote 29: "S.G.O." in the LondonTimes, June 10, 1867.]

The simplicity of the church of England has steered too precise a mean between the symbolism and suggestive ceremonies of the church that believes, and the absence of all form on the part of those who do not. Her preamble, "of ceremonies, why some be abolished and some retained," like other compromises, aims at pleasing everybody and ends in pleasing no one. With one party, as Milton says in an expressive line,

"New Presbyter is but old priest writ large."

With the other, the minister must be a priest, the communion, Mass, and the Catholic service restored. This comes of inventing a religion in a hurry, patching up a provisional government by rebels who have disowned a time-honored throne. This comes of arraying one's self in the shreds of what one's self has rent from the seamless garment. So much for aiming at what a prelate of that communion has recently called "a satisfying amount of ritual," which is to clothe no idea, stand for nothing beyond itself, and soothe the senses without appealing to the faith. So much for the arrogance of deciding that the "godly and decent order of the ancient fathers had been altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories and legends, with a multitude of responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations, and synodals;" not to speak of the "hardness of the rules called thePie, and the manifold changings of the service."

We shall wait to see the result of that "satisfying amount of ritual" in which it is proposed to invest a service purely Protestant; whereabout on the scale the satisfaction is to be placed, and so, whom it is intended to satisfy. One ritual system alone has a gift from heaven to answer and fulfil the yearnings of the soul.One act of uniformity alone is worthy of a thought to the worshipper. The creed rehearses it: "I profess that there are truly and properly seven sacraments of the new law instituted by our Lord, and necessary for the salvation of mankind." Then, "I also receive and admit the received and approved ceremonies of the Catholic Church in the solemn administration of the aforesaid sacraments." It is to express the invisible, and to fence round what is all sacred, and to respond by the tribute of man to the gift of God, that the church has ordained these details of beauty and solemnity. It is essentially as an homage and a reverence to her Lord. This does not contradict what has been said above either of the variety or of the adaptive character of Catholic devotions. For we are here speaking not of devotions as voices of human expression toward God, but of sacraments, the channels of his communications with man.

Let me now only mention two other chief instances of the subjectivity of the church's dealings with her children. The whole theory, then, of intentions in prayer is a proof of the adaptive character of Catholic devotion. ThePater, Ave, Gloria, Credo, the Veni Creator, Miserere, Memorare, these are, as it were, so many notes in the church's scale. Let me here adopt, though I should also modify, the words of a great writer on a kindred subject. They apply, partly at least, to that on which our thoughts are turned:

"There are seven notes in the scale; make them thirteen, yet what a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise! What science brings so much out of so little? Out of what poor elements does some great master in it create his new world! Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity or trick of art, like some game or fashion of the day, without reality, without meaning? We may do so; and then, perhaps, we shall also account the science of theology to be a matter of words; yet, as there is a divinity in the theology of the church which those who feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. … Is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, which is gone and perishes? Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself? … No; they have escaped from some higher sphere; … they are echoes from our home; they are the voice of angels, or theMagnificatof saints, or the living laws of divine governance, or the divine attributes; something are they besides themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter." [Footnote 30]

[Footnote 30: Newman'sSermons before the University of Oxford. 2d edition, pp. 349, 350.]

The beauty of this extract, from perhaps one of the greatest passages of its eminent author, may be my apology for its length. What Dr. Newman here says of the evolution of musical harmony from simple elements may be applied to the vast fabric of intentions, reaching to no less than three worlds, the church militant, triumphant, and purifying, which we are taught to build out of such few brief prayers as a child might utter.

Once more: the variety of the religious orders, congregations, institutes, existing in the church, and marked by her approval, afford a further proof of her adaptation to the various needs and characters of men. The system which recognizes the sanctity of marriage by elevating it to the rank of a sacrament proclaims also the superiority of the "best part" chosen by Mary, "which shall not be taken from her;" and, within this first great principle of classification among the church's children, separating between the secular and the religious life, and strictly subjective in the sense in which the word has here been used, we find an almost endless diversity of what are technically called "religions." The cloistered and the uncloistered; and among the former, the eremitic and the conventual, with their subdivisions; among the latter, a devotion special and concentrated upon every malady to which man is heir. Brothers of the hospitals, brothers of Christian doctrine, communities devoted to the leper, the lunatic, the ordinary sick, the hopelessly diseased, the poor as such, the young, the orphan, the ignorant, the upper classes, the middle rank, the homeless pauper, the pilgrim, the penitent, the convict, the galley-slave, the felon condemned to die.

This very glory of the King's daughter, her beauty in the variety with which she is surrounded, the subjective provisions she makes for each of her children called to religion, has been made by writers of more than common shallowness an argument against her unity. It is difficult to treat with gravity a distortion of the truth so perverse. "Look," says a platform orator—"look at the divisions of the Church of Rome. She taunts us with our dissensions. It is true, we have our high church, and our low, and our broad; there are those amongst us who hold the sacramental principle, and those who deny it. But Rome, too, has her divisions, as deep and as fundamental. Has she not her Franciscans and her Dominicans, her Benedictines and her Seculars, her Jesuits, and I know not who besides? Have not her religious orders and her secular canons, in times past, carved grotesque caricatures of each other in the gargoyles andmisereresof their respective churches? And yet, with her characteristic effrontery, she dares to tell us that she is one!"

It was well answered. You might with equal reason argue that an army was not one, not one in its operations and campaign, nor moving at the nod of one commander, because it had its several branches and "arms" of the service; its light horse, troops of the line, skirmishers, cavalry for the charge, heavy artillery. Rather, the essential unity of the whole is all the more demonstrated by the distinct lines and modes of operation belonging to each department. Herodotus is at much pains to detail the different nationalities and customs of warfare in the army of Xerxes before he proceeds to narrate their combined descent upon Greece. And to return to our thesis: the objective unity of the religious orders throughout the church's long life, in all that ever concerned her faith and essential teaching, has been enhanced, made conspicuous, and shown to be supernatural, by their acknowledged subjective diversity in much beside.

But we are not here in need of a Catholic apologist. A vivid and popular writer, if not of history, yet of widely accepted historical romance, had the intelligence to perceive this very characteristic of the church.He has thrown no little power into developing the truth, that the Catholic system is thus universally subjective, has a place for every one, rejects none of earth's children, and can retain them, find them employment, and communicate to them happiness, within the ample breadth of her unity.

He describes the merely local characters of the Church of England, and her consequent inability to make way in foreign missions. He has a fling at what he calls the polity of the Church of Rome as the very masterpiece of human wisdom. It is, he says, a system of tactics to be regarded with reluctant admiration. Then more particularly: "She thoroughly understands, what no other church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts. In some sects, particularly in infant sects, enthusiasm is suffered to be rampant. In other sects, particularly in sects long established and richly endowed, it is regarded with aversion. The Catholic Church neither submits to enthusiasm nor proscribes it, but uses it. She considers it as a great moving force, which in itself, like the muscular powers of a fine horse, is neither good nor evil, but which may be so directed as to produce great good or great evil, and she assumes the direction to herself. … She knows that, where religious feelings have obtained the complete empire of the mind, they impart a strange energy, that they raise man above the dominion of pain and pleasure, that obloquy becomes glory. She knows that a person in this state of enthusiasm is no object of contempt. He may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary, extravagant; but he will do and suffer things which it is for her interest that somebody should do and suffer. She accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to him some forlorn hope, and sends him forth with her benedictions and her applause."

Then, after showing how the Anglican system expels from itself the enthusiasm it can neither wield nor control, he proceeds to draw his contrast:

"Far different is the policy of Rome. The ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the polite and learned may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of coarse, dark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the resources of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual character and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches not exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of uneducated hearers; and all his influence is employed to strengthen the church of which he is a minister. To that church he becomes as strongly attached as any of the cardinals whose scarlet carriages and liveries crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all the energy of the voluntary system below. It would be easy to mention very recent instances in which the hearts of hundreds of thousands, estranged from her by the selfishness, sloth, and cowardice of the beneficed clergy, have been brought back by the zeal of the begging friars. At Rome the Countess of Huntingdon would have a place in the calendar as St. Sabina, and Mrs. Fry would be foundress and first superior of the blessed order of Sisters of the Gaols.Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford: he is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome: he is certain to be the first general of a new society devoted to the interests and honor of the church. Place Johanna Southcote at Rome: she founds an order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the church; a solemn service is consecrated to her memory; and her statue, placed over the holy water, strikes the eye of every stranger who enters St. Peter's."

Such thoughts as I have endeavored to suggest will not be vain, if they lead us to recognize the attributes and credentials of the church in her mission to the world, not less in the comparison of part with part among her manifestations, than in the harmony of the whole. She is as divine, as Catholic, as faithful to her trust, and as unerring in her functions, in the subjective character of her devotions, as in the objectivity of her teaching. Nothing surely can be more attractive to the imagination, more winning to the heart, or more persuasive to the will than the condescension and personal care of that which is all the while lofty in its attributes and authoritative in its claims and power. The church is a mother while she is a queen, and we her children no less than her subjects and disciples. She teaches us to pray while she commands us to believe; and gives a personal experience of her science in the one, while affording abundant proof of her embassy and her inerrancy in the other. Thus, while I am enlightened by her truth, I am fostered by her charity. The need of which I am conscious in myself,das Ich, for something on which to feed the faculty within me for supernatural love and personal devotion, is as completely met and fulfilled as any craving for a truth above myself,das nicht Ich, which comes down to me from heaven that it may raise me thither. "Descendit" says St. Augustine, "misericordia, ut ascendat miseria."

She was all compact of beauty,Like the sunlight and the flowers;One of those radiant beingsThat prove this world of oursNot utterly forsakenBy the angel host of God,Since now and then its valleysBy their holy feet are trod.If her hair was black and glossyOr golden-hued and bright,Or if her eyes were azure,Or dark and deep as night,I know not—this truth onlyDo I know or care to know;Never a lovelier maidenBlest this weary world below.In the castle ruled her father,And his lands stretched miles awayMinetoiled down in the hamletFor his daily bread each day;Too far apart were we.Too high wert thou for me,O Lady Imogen!When the meadow was all goldenWith the cowslips' May-day bells,And the sweet breath of the primroseCame up from fragrant dells;When the blackbird and the throstleWhistled cheerly in the morn,And the skylark, quivering upward,Rose singing from the corn;Then when the blessed spring-timeFilled with beauty all the earth,From her father's lordly castleWould this maiden wander forth,Where the violets were bloomingIn unfrequented dells;O'er the mead where zephyrs pilferedFragrance from the cowslips' bells.Wheresoever beauty lingered,There this radiant maiden strayed,And beauty by her presenceMore beautiful was made;The sunshine looked more goldenAs it gleamed around her head;And the grass more green and livingRose up beneath her tread;And the flowers more bright and fragrantTo greet her coming grew;And mad with love and musicThe birds about her flew.Oh! she was the loveliest maidenThat ever eye did see;She was sunshine, she was music,She was all the world to me.But she never knew the passionThat set my soul aflame;That hid me by the hedge-rowTo watch whene'er she came,To see her glorious beauty,Like a star from heaven, go by.Oh! to see her but one momentGod knows that I would die,O peerless Imogen!They bore her to the abbeyWith the pomp of princely woe,With steeds and hearse and snowy pall,And white plumes drooping low:And high, proud heads were bendingIn her funereal train,And princely eyes were weepingHeavy tears like summer rain.I far off followed slowly,No tears were in mine eye;'Twas not for one so lowlyTo weep for one so high;But, oh! since she hath vanished,With her have seemed to goAll the beauty, all the music,Of this weary world below!Dead, dead, and buried, Imogen!E. Young.

[Footnote 31:The Jesuits in North America, in the Seventeenth Century.By Francis Parkman. Boston:Little, Brown & Co. 1867.History and General Description of New France,By the Rev. P. F. X. de Charlevoix, S.J.Translated with notes, by John Gilmary Shea.In six vols. Vols. i. and ii.New York: John Gilmary Shea. 1866History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United StatesBy John Gilmary Shea.New York: Edward Dunigan & Brother. 1855.]

The illustrious Society of Jesus, which has sanctified by its martyrs every corner of the earth, has reaped more glory probably in North America than any other missionary order, though it was not the first to enter the field. The Franciscans, the Dominicans, and other devoted soldiers of the cross who followed in the footsteps of the Spanish adventurers in the south, established flourishing missions, some of which have lasted to this day. They labored with a zeal and singleness of purpose which could not be surpassed, and a large proportion of them gave up their lives for the faith; but unfortunately the crimes of their countrymen have been permitted, by the prejudice of modern writers, to tarnish the renown of these heroic preachers, and the cruelties of a Cortez are better remembered than the virtues of the Spanish Dominicans. The Jesuits in the northern parts of the continent have received more justice in history. About their character and achievements there is only one voice. Oppression and outrage have fortunately kept away from their path.It was, moreover, their practice to live almost wholly aloof from their own countrymen, and to compose their Christian settlements entirely of Indian converts. They may not have surpassed their brethren of other orders in devotedness or in perseverance; but they have a renown in modern Protestant literature which has no equal except in the glorious record of the early Christian persecutions.

When the Jesuits first came to Canada, the Franciscans had been before them, but there was little trace left of the Christianity which they had planted. The capture of Quebec by the English, in 1629, almost wholly obliterated the mission, and it was not until the colony was restored to France, in 1632, that the history of missionary enterprise in that part of America really begins. One of the first steps of the French government then was to secure a body of priests, to labor in their recovered possessions. The work was offered to the Capuchins, but they declined it. It was then given to the Jesuits, and on the 18th of April, 1632, two priests, Le Jeune and De Nouë, with a lay-brother named Gilbert, set sail from Havre for Quebec. It was but a cheerless home in which, after a three months' tempestuous voyage, they set about installing themselves. Their predecessors had left on the outskirts of the settlement two wretched wooden buildings, thatched with long grass and plastered with mud. One of them had been half-burned by the English, and was still in ruins. Here the three missionaries fixed their home, and prepared for the reception of the brethren who were soon to follow them. One of the buildings was converted into a store-house, stable, work-shop, and bakery. The other contained four principal rooms. One was fitted up as a rude chapel, one as a refectory, one as a kitchen, and the fourth as a sleeping-room for workmen. Four small rooms, the largest eight feet square, opened off the refectory, and here, when the rest of the little band arrived, six priests were lodged, while two lay-brothers found shelter in the garret. The whole establishment was surrounded by a palisade. About the end of May, Champlain arrived, to resume the command of Quebec, and with him came four more Jesuits—Brébeuf, Masse, Daniel, and Davost. The superior of the little community was Father Le Jeune. Of the others, Masse, whom by reason of his useful qualities they nicknamed "Le Père Utile," had been in America before. His special duty was to take care of the pigs and cows, upon which the missionaries relied for a great part of their sustenance. De Nouë had charge of the eight or ten laborers employed about the "residence." All the fathers, in the intervals of leisure left from their duties of preaching, saying mass and vespers, hearing confessions at the fort of Quebec, catechising a few Indians, and striving to master the enormous difficulties of the Algonquin and Huron languages, worked with the men, spade in hand.

To learn the language was at first the greatest of all their troubles. There were French interpreters in the colony, fur traders who had spent years among the tribes, and were almost as savage as the Indians themselves. But these men were no friends to the Jesuits, and one and all refused their assistance. Father Le Jeune gives an amusing description of his perplexity, as he sat with an Indian child on one side, and a little negro boy left by the English on the other, neither of the three able to understand the language of the others.Convinced that there was little to be taught and little to be learned in that way, he set off one morning to visit a band of Indians who were fishing on the St. Lawrence. He found their bark lodges set up by the brink of the river, and a boy led him into the hut of an old squaw, his grandmother, who hastened to give him four smoked eels on a piece of birch bark. There were several other women in the lodge, and while they showed him how to roast his eels on a forked stick, or squatted around the fire, eating their rude meal, and using their dogs as napkins, the good father made strenuous attempts to talk a little broken Algonquin, eking out his defect of words with such pantomime as he could invent. All, however, was in vain. If he trusted to what he could pick up from straggling fishing parties, it might be years before he could fairly begin to preach the gospel to these poor tribes of the wilderness. In his difficulty he had recourse to the saints. It was not long before what he deemed the direct interposition of Providence came to his aid. Several years before an Indian who had been converted by the Recollects, and baptized by the name of Pierre, had been taken to France and partially educated. He had lately returned to Canada, and not only relapsed into his old savage way of life, but apostatized from the faith. Nothing was left of his French education save a few French vices and a knowledge of the French language. He often came to the fort begging drink and tobacco, but he shunned the Jesuits, of whose rigid virtue he stood in horror. But one day, about this time, Pierre incurred the displeasure of the French commandant, and the fort was closed against him. Repulsed by a young squaw whom he wanted to make his wife, and unfitted by his French education for the hard and precarious life of a hunter, he went to the priests for food and shelter. Le Jeune hailed him as a gift from heaven in answer to his prayers. He installed the poor wretch in the mission-house, begged for him at the fort a suit of cast-off clothes, and set zealously to work to learn from him the mysteries of the Algonquin language. "How thankful I am," wrote Le Jeune, "to those who gave me tobacco last year! At every difficulty I give my master a piece of it to make him more attentive."

The terribly severe winter was passed in studies such as these, in practising with snow-shoes, and teaching Indian children. Bands of savages often encamped near the mission-house in the course of their hunting journeys, and Le Jeune, whenever they appeared, would take his stand at the door and ring a bell. The children would gather round him, and leading them into the refectory, which also served as a school-room, he would teach them the Pater, Ave, and Credo, with an Indian prayer which he had composed with the assistance of Pierre, show them how to make the sign of the cross, and explain portions of the catechism. The exercises closed with the singing of the Lord's prayer in Algonquin rhymes, and after that each pupil was rewarded with a porringer of peas. As spring approached, Pierre began to bethink himself of the fasting and prayers of Lent, and ran off one day to a party of Englishmen, at Tadoussac, where he drowned in liquor the small remnant of his Christianity. Then he joined his two brothers, one a famous hunter named Mestigoit, the other the most noted sorcerer or "medicine-man" of the tribe.

The next autumn Father Le Jeune was invited by the Indians to join a hunting party, in which these three brothers were included; not that they valued the good missionary's company, but they were shrewd enough to suspect that, if he went with them, he would be well supplied with provisions. Father de Nouë had gone on a similar expedition in the winter, and returned nearly dead; but Le Jeune resolved to risk it, and in the latter part of October, with twenty Indians, embarked in canoes on the St. Lawrence. Landing after a while, and being joined by two other bands, they spent five months trudging through the trackless and snow-covered wilderness; sleeping by night in the stifling huts which they made by digging holes in the snow and building over them a covering of poles and birch bark; hunting by day the beaver, the moose, and the caribou; often half-starved when game failed, and holding the most disgusting orgies of gluttony when it was plenty. Somebody had unfortunately put among the priest's stores a small keg of wine. Pierre stole it and got drunk, and when Mestigoit had sobered him by a liberal application of scalding water, which took all the skin off his face and breast, the apostate (as Le Jeune always calls him) vowed to revenge himself by killing the missionary whose strong drink had brought him into trouble. The poor father fled to the woods until Pierre's frenzy had passed away, and there, he says, "though my bed had not been made up since the creation of the world, it was not hard enough to prevent me from sleeping." We have no space to follow the narrative of this hard winter. The days were spent in hunger and exhausting toil, the nights in frightful discomfort. The huts, in a space some thirteen feet square, were made to accommodate nineteen savages, men, women, and children, not to speak of a number of wild and hungry dogs. A fire of pine-knots in the centre filled the place with a blinding, acrid smoke, and at times they could breathe only by lying flat on their faces with their mouths to the cold ground. In this horrible den, the dogs fought for his food, and the savages, instigated by the sorcerer, loaded him with insults and shocked his ears with their filthy conversation. The sorcerer, whose pretensions he ridiculed, and whose influence he lost no opportunity of undermining, hated him with an especially malignant animosity. Under pretence of teaching him Algonquin, he palmed off upon the priest the foulest words in the Indian language, so that poor Father Le Jeune's attempts to explain the mysteries of the faith were often interrupted by shouts of laughter. On Christmas day there had been a great scarcity of game, and the party were in danger of famishing. The incantations of the medicine man had failed. In despair the savages came to Le Jeune, and begged him to try his God. The sorcerer showed some gleam of faith. Even Pierre gave signs of repentance. The missionary was filled with hope. He wrote out two prayers in Algonquin. He hung against the side of the hut a crucifix and a reliquary, and bade the Indians kneel before them and repeat the prayers, promising to renounce their superstitions and obey Christ if he would save them from perishing of hunger. Then he dismissed the hunters with his blessing. At night they came back successful. A feast was ordered. In the midst of the repast, Le Jeune arose to remind them of their promise; but Pierre, who had killed nothing, was sulky and incredulous. He said, with a laugh, that it was not the crucifix and prayers which had brought them luck.The sorcerer cried out to the missionary, "Hold your tongue! you have no sense!" And the multitude, whose good disposition had vanished with their hunger, took their cue from him, as usual.

All this was discouraging enough, nor was it the worst; and when Father Le Jeune, at three o'clock one April morning, knocked at the door of his humble mission-house, and was received in the arms of his brother apostles, it was with the melancholy reflection that his painful and perilous journey had been, except as a tour of observation, little more than a failure. An absolute failure, however, it certainly was not. Careful reconnoissances must always precede great campaigns. It was only by pushing out into the heart of the pagan realm which they had come to conquer, that the soldiers of Christ could determine where they might best make their main assault and in what quarter a victory ensured the most glorious results. The missionaries were but a handful; the field before them was immense; they could only cultivate such portions of it as promised the richest harvest. They had now learned that the Algonquins were comparatively few in number, and of little influence or importance among the North American tribes. Wandering to and fro as they did from year's end to year's end, it was impossible to establish among them the sort of Christian settlements or missions which the Jesuits proposed founding as centres from which the light of truth might radiate through the wilderness. But further westward, on the shores of the great lakes, dwelt numerous stationary tribes, among whom strongholds of the faith might be erected. The conversion of any considerable part of these people would affect many kindred tribes, and so it might be possible to found in the heart of the forest a great Christian empire. As the first basis for their operations, they chose the Hurons, on the lake which bears their name. These people, they learned, had populous villages, knew how to till the ground, and carried on some trade with neighboring nations. Their ferocity exceeded that of the Algonquins. A prisoner who bore the torture bravely was cooked and eaten, that his captors might increase their own courage; and the missionaries spoke of the Huron country as the chief fortress and donjon-keep of the demon, "une des principales forteresses et comme un donjon des démons." The distance to be traversed, by the only route it was possible to follow, was about nine hundred miles. The way was dangerous and painful. The goal to be reached was possibly martyrdom—certainly continuous suffering of body and mind. Three missionaries, Brébeuf, Daniel, and Davost, offered themselves for the enterprise. Le Jeune's duties as superior obliged him to confine his labors to the neighboring Algonquins. It was not easy, however, for the little band of apostles to carry their heroic purpose into execution. Every year a company of several hundred Hurons used to visit Quebec, to barter their furs and tobacco for kettles, hatchets, knives, cloth, beads, and other commodities. It was resolved that the priests should return with them when they made their next annual journey. The Hurons came in July, 1633, six or seven hundred of them, with a hundred and forty canoes. They staid four days, trading, gambling, feasting, and holding a council with the French officers at the fort. Champlain introduced the three missionaries, and commended them to the care and friendship of the Indians.They were received at first with acclamations of delight, and the chiefs of different villages disputed for the honor of entertaining them. But before the hour of departure came, they changed their minds. The Indians went away and the priests returned to the mission-house. Here they spent a year studying the Huron language. At the end of a twelvemonth, the Indians came again. A second time they were besought to take the Jesuits back with them. They consented, wavered, refused, hesitated, the missionaries begging to be received, as if the hardships they would have to suffer were the greatest of privileges. At last Father Brébeuf made a vow to St. Joseph. At once, he says, the Indians became tractable, and the whole party embarked in the frail canoes for the shores of Lake Huron. Their route was up the Ottawa river, through Lake Nipissing, down French river, and along the shores of the great Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. The voyage occupied thirty days. The three missionaries were in separate canoes, barefoot, lest their shoes should injure the vessel, toiling laboriously at the paddle, wading often through the rapids and pushing or pulling up their barks, and doing their share of the burden of transportation at the long and frequent portages. They had no food but a little corn crushed between two stones and moistened with water. The Indians treated them with great harshness, stole or threw away a part of their baggage, including most of their books and writing materials, and finally deserted Father Daniel and Father Davost on the way. When Brébeuf reached the end of the voyage, on the shores of Georgian Bay, his Indian companions threw his baggage on the ground, left him to his own resources, and trudged off to their villages, some twenty miles distant. Brébeuf, however, was not disheartened. He threw himself upon his knees and thanked God who had preserved him so far. Then he proceeded to examine the country. He knew the spot well, for before the suspension of the Canada missions which followed the capture of Quebec, he had passed three years among the Hurons of this region, at an Indian town which had since been burned. Hiding his baggage and the sacred vessels in the woods, he set off in search of the new town, which he knew had been built a few miles from the site of the old one. It was evening when he reached it. A crowd who recognized his tall, soldier-like figure and black robes ran out to meet him, shouting for joy at his return. They took him to the lodge of one Awandoay, the richest and most hospitable of the Hurons. After many days his two lost brethren rejoined him. Daniel had been picked up by another party of Indians. Davost had been left among the Algonquins on Allumette Island, and now appeared half-dead with famine and fatigue. With them came four French laymen from Quebec. Awandoay received them all, and as soon as they had determined to make this village, which the natives called Ihonatiria, the headquarters of their mission, all the inhabitants of the place, as well as the people of the neighboring town of Wenrio, fell to and built them a house. It was a structure of sapling poles and sheets of bark, thirty-six feet long, and about twenty feet wide, built after the Huron fashion; but the priests, with the aid of their tools, made several improvements of the interior, which were to the savages a never-failing source of wonder and admiration. They divided their dwelling into three rooms. The first was a store-house; the second, a sleeping chamber, kitchen, workshop, refectory, and school-room, all in one; the third was the chapel.

Thus the Huron mission, which had been founded several years previously, and broken up before it was thoroughly established, was opened anew. Other priests soon came out from France to join it. Garnier, Chaumonot, Chabanel, and the illustrious martyr Isaac Jogues were among the Jesuits who gathered around this lodge in the wilderness in the course of the next few years. In the summer-time, when most of the Indians were away on their hunting or trading excursions, and the villages were quiet, the missionaries renewed their strength for labor and suffering by the exercise of the annual retreat according to the instructions of St. Ignatius. It was in winter that their hardships were the greatest. By day they trudged long, weary miles through the snow and wet to visit neighboring villages; by night their short rest was disturbed and their ears shocked by the horrible orgies, incantations, and superstitious rites in which the Hurons used to pass their winter leisure. There were the hideous ceremonies by which their sorcerers pretended to cure the sick; the licentious practices by which they sought to propitiate the demons of pestilence and famine; sometimes the awful tortures of captives taken in war, and their agonizing deaths, in which the good fathers, though every nerve shuddered with horror at the dreadful sight, sometimes found consolation in making a convert of the dying wretch, and washing out his sins at the last moment in the saving waters of baptism. At every opportunity they collected the children of the village at their house; and Brébeuf, vested in surplice and cap, led them in chanting thePater Noster, translated into Indian rhymes, taught them the Hail Mary, the Creed, and the Commandments, taught them to make the sign of the cross, and gave a few simple instructions. A present of two or three beads, or raisins, or prunes sent them away happy and ensured their coming again. Once in a while the adults were induced to listen to instruction, and invited to discuss the principal points of religious doctrine. They grunted "Good" or "That is true" at every proposition, but for a long, long time very few were willing to embrace the faith to which they gave so ready an assent. Like the fishes who listened to St. Anthony's sermon,

"Much delighted were they,But preferred the old way."

Still, they were ready enough to visit the hut of the missionaries, and examine their marvels of ingenuity and skill, the fame of which had gone abroad throughout the whole Huron nation. They would sit on the ground by the hour, watching the clock and waiting for it to strike. They thought it was alive, and dignified it with the title of "Captain." "What does the Captain say?" they would often ask.

"When he strikes twelve times," the Jesuits answered, "he says, 'Hang on the kettle;' and when he strikes four times he says, 'Get up and go home.'"

So at noon visitors were never wanting to share the Captain's hospitality; but at the stroke of four they all departed, and the missionaries gathered round the fire and discussed the intricacies of the Huron language. Among the other wonders of the lodge there was a hand-mill which the savages were never tired of turning. A magnet proved a great puzzle to them; and there was a magnifying-glass which transformed a flea into a frightful monster, and, we may suppose, filled them with alarm.They conceived an overpowering respect for the wisdom and supernatural powers of the black-gowns, and had for them also, upon the whole, a genuine good will; but there were moments when their influence, and even their safety, were endangered by the violence of the Indian superstitions. Once in a season of drought a "rain-maker" persuaded the Hurons that the red color of the cross which stood before the Jesuits' dwelling frightened away the bird of thunder. It was about to be cut down. The priests begged them to paint it white, and see if the thunder would come. It was done, but rain still kept aloof.

"Your spirits cannot help you," said the fathers; "ask the aid of him who made the world, and perhaps he will hear your prayers."

The Indians were induced to promise obedience to the true God. Nine masses were offered in honor of St. Joseph, and every day there were solemn processions and prayers. In a few days there were heavy falls of rain, and the Hurons conceived an exalted idea of the power of French "medicine." But alas for their promises! They were soon forgotten.

In the autumn and winter of 1636, the Huron towns were swept by a contagious fever, accompanied by the small-pox. Three of the Jesuits—Jogues, Garnier, and Chatelain—were seized with the fever, but the protection of Providence raised them up for the relief of their poor red-skinned brethren. In the depth of winter the missionaries went from village to village, visiting every hut, tending the sick, bringing them such few delicacies as their scanty stores afforded, and pressing their religious instructions at every available occasion. But it was hard to make an impression on the stolid hearts of the savages. They comprehended the pains and fires of hell, but they could not understand the happiness of heaven. They had no wish to go after death to a place where there would be neither war nor hunting, and where, they feared, the French would give them nothing to eat. Nor, when the Huron had at last been persuaded that heaven was good for Indians as well as Frenchmen, was it easy to produce in him the proper dispositions for baptism. He felt no contrition, for he believed that he had never committed sin. "Why did you baptize that Iroquois?" asked a dying neophyte; "he will get to heaven before us, and when he sees us coming he will drive us out." This was disheartening; but once for a few days there was a gleam of consolation. The whole village of Ossossané resolved to embrace the faith of the black-robes, to give up their superstitions, and to reform their manners. One of their principal sorcerers proclaimed in a loud voice, through the streets of the town, that the God of the French was henceforth their Master. Nine days afterward a noted sorcerer came to Ossossané, and the Indians held a grand medicine feast, hoping to secure the aid of God and the devil at once. The superstitious rites were all renewed; the nights grew hideous with yells of incantation, and magic figures to drive away the demon of pestilence were put up on every house. The danger to the missionaries now became imminent. When they left their hut in the morning, it was with a well-grounded doubt whether they should ever return. The sacrament of baptism, which it was a part of their daily labor to administer to dying children, came to be looked upon as a pestiferous charm.They could only give it by stealth, sometimes letting fall a drop from a spoonful of sugared water, with which they pretended to cool the patient's parched lips, or else touching the skin with a moist finger or the corner of a wet handkerchief. The mysterious black-robed magicians were now regarded as the cause of the pestilence; and had it not been for the awe in which they were held by the savages, their lives would quickly have been at an end. As it was, they were everywhere repulsed and insulted. Children pelted them from behind huts, friends looked at them askance, and the more violent of their enemies clamored for their death. The picture of the last judgment which hung in their chapel was taken to be a charm of direful power. The litanies which they chanted together were incantations pregnant with plague and famine. The clock was a malignant demon, and the poor "Captain" had to be stopped. In August, 1637, a great council of the Hurons, including deputations from four nations, was held to deliberate upon the affairs of the confederation. The chief, whose office it was to preside over the feast of the dead, arose, and in a set speech accused the Jesuits of being the cause of the calamities that afflicted them. One accuser followed another, Brébeuf replying to their charges with ingenuity and boldness. The debate continued through the night. Many of the Indians fell asleep, and others went away. One old chief as he passed out said to Brébeuf, "If some young man should split your head open, we should have nothing to say." "What sort of men are these?" cried out another impatiently, as the Jesuit went on with his harangue; "they are always saying the same thing, and repeating the same words a hundred times." Another council was called to pronounce the sentence of death. The priests appeared before it with such unflinching courage that their judges, struck with admiration, deferred the decree. Still it seemed as if their fate could not be long deferred. They wrote a farewell letter to their superior, Father Le Jeune, and committed to the care of an Indian convert the most precious properties of the mission, the sacred furniture of the altar, and the vocabulary which they had compiled of the Huron language. Then they gave a parting feast, after the Indian custom of those who were about to die. The intrepidity manifested by this proceeding was not without its effect. The animosity of the savages became less intense, and though the persecution continued, and the lives of individual members of the little band were more than once attempted, the project of a massacre was for the present abandoned.

By the end of the year 1638, the mission had seven priests who spoke Huron, and three more who were learning it. There were about sixty converts, and at Ossossané a commodious chapel of wood had been built by the labor of artisans sent for the purpose from Quebec. The original intention of the Jesuits was to form permanent missions in each of the principal Huron towns. This, however, proved impracticable, and a spot was chosen on the little river Wye, near Matchedash Bay of Lake Huron, for a great central station, to which they gave the name of Sainte Marie. The Huron towns were now apportioned into districts, and a certain number of priests assigned to each. Father Garnier and Father Jogues made an ineffectual attempt to establish a mission among the Tobacco nation, two days' journey to the south-west.But their evil reputation had preceded them. The children cried out, when they saw them approach, that famine and pest were coming. Every door was closed against them; and when in despair they left the town, a band of young braves followed them, hatchet in hand, to put them to death. Under cover of the darkness they made their escape, and Father Jogues, with Father Raymbault, afterward passed around the northern shore of Lake Huron, and preached the faith among the Ojibwas, as far as Sault Sainte Marie, at the outlet of Lake Superior. In the mean time Brébeuf and Chaumonot went on a mission to the powerful and ferocious Neutral nation which inhabited the country between lakes Erie and Ontario, on both sides of the Niagara river. They visited eighteen of the Neutral towns. In all they were received with a storm of insults, blows, and maledictions. The Hurons had been afraid to kill them, dreading the vengeance of the French at Quebec; but they had sent secret emissaries to incite the Neutrals against them, and had promised nine French hatchets to the tribe which should be their executioners. Brébeuf was the object of their special hatred. This glorious man, whom Parkman calls the truest hero and the greatest martyr of the Huron mission, was feared with an intensity which none of his companions inspired. But in the midst of his persecutions God consoled him with heavenly favors. Celestial visions comforted him in his toilsome journeys through the forest. He saw the image of a vast and gorgeous palace, and a voice assured him that such was to be the reward of those who dwell in hovels for the cause of God. Angels appeared to him, and more than once the Blessed Virgin and his dear patron, St. Joseph, were revealed to his sight. Now, when the Neutral nation shut him out of their lodges, half famished and nearly frozen, the apparition of a great cross—"large enough," he said to his brethren, "to crucify us all"—came slowly up from the country of the Iroquois. It seems like a warning of the glorious fate which awaited him, and to those heroic souls who longed for martyrdom as the bright crown of their labor, we cannot doubt that it was also a sweet consolation.

The day of persecution, however, was only dawning. The sufferings of the past few years were as nothing in comparison with the torments that were to follow. In the summer of 1642, the mission had been reduced to great destitution, and Father Jogues was sent to Quebec to obtain clothing, writing materials, wine for the altar, and other necessary stores. He returned with the annual fleet of Huron canoes, having with him two young French laymen, René Goupil and Guillaume Couture, who had attached themselves without pay to the mission, and a few Indian converts. They were passing the Lake of St. Peter, in the St. Lawrence river, when they were suddenly attacked by a war-party of Mohawks. The greater part of the Hurons leaped ashore and took to the woods. The French and their converts made fight for a while, but were soon overpowered. Father Jogues sprang into a clump of bulrushes and might have escaped, but, seeing Goupil in the hands of the savages, he came forward, resolved to share his fate. Couture, too, got away, but came back to join his companions. In his excitement he shot dead one of a band of Mohawks who sprang upon him. The others rushed upon him, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed at his fingers like wild beasts, and thrust a sword through one of his hands.The Jesuit threw his arms about his friend's neck, but the Indians dragged him away, beat him till he was senseless, and when he revived lacerated his fingers as they had done those of Couture. Goupil was then treated in the same manner. They set off with their prisoners for the Mohawk towns, rowing across Lake Champlain and Lake George. Thirteen days of horrible suffering were passed on the journey. At last they reached a palisaded village, built upon a hill on the banks of the Mohawk river. At the entrance the prisoners were forced to run the gauntlet. Then they were placed on a high platform, disfigured, livid, and streaming with blood, and the crowd proceeded to "caress" them. A Christian Algonquin woman, a prisoner among them, was compelled to cut off the priest's left thumb with a clam-shell. Goupil was mutilated in the same manner. The torture lasted all day. At night the captives were stretched on their backs with limbs extended, and their wrists and ankles fastened to stakes. The children now amused themselves by placing live coals on their naked bodies. For three days more they were exposed on the scaffold; then they were led to two other Mohawk towns in turn, and at each the tortures were repeated. Once some Huron prisoners were placed on the same platform with them, and Father Jogues found an opportunity to convert them in the midst of the torture, and to baptize them with a few rain-drops from an ear of corn that had been thrown to him for food. Couture, having won the respect of the savages by his intrepid bearing, was adopted into one of their families, and gained in time great influence over them. Goupil was one day detected making the sign of the cross on the forehead of a child, and for this was killed by a blow from a hatchet, falling at the feet of Father Jogues, who gave him absolution before he expired. The priest himself, warned every hour that his death was near, and hated by his captors, who thought he brought bad luck to their hunting parties, was dragged around from place to place, now following the hunters through the forest, now laboring in the villages to convert the old men and squaws, or baptize dying children. He brought firewood for his masters, did their bidding without a murmur, was silent under their abuse; but, when they reviled his faith, he rose with a majestic air, and rebuked them as one having authority.

He had been nearly a year in slavery when the Indians took him with them on a trading visit to the Dutch at Fort Orange, (Albany.) We can imagine how his heart must have beat at the sight of a white face after his long banishment but he had no thought of turning back after his hand had once been put to the plough, and no plans of escape entered his mind. While here, however, he learned that the Indians of the village had at last resolved to kill him as soon as he returned. He had found means to warn the French at Three Rivers of intended treachery on the part of some Mohawk visitors, and the savages had determined to be revenged. To trust himself longer in their hands would not be heroism, but foolhardiness. A Dutch settler named Van Curler offered him a passage, in a little vessel then lying in the Hudson, either to Bordeaux or Rochelle. The Jesuit spent a night in prayer, and then resolved to accept the proposal. With the assistance of his Dutch friends, and after several narrow escapes from detection, he got away from his savage masters by night, rowed to the vessel in a boat which the settlers left for his use on the shore, and was kindly received by the sailors and stowed away in the hold.There he remained half-stifled for two days and a half, while the enraged Mohawks ransacked the settlement and searched the vessel. For better security until the day of sailing, he was then concealed in the garret of a house on shore, where his host stole the provisions that the kind-hearted Dutchmen sent for his use. The Dutch dominie, Megapolensis, visited him here, and did all he could for his comfort. At last, an order came from Manhattan that he should be sent down to the Director-General Kieft, who exchanged his squalid Indian dress for a suit of Dutch cloth, and gave him passage in a small vessel to Falmouth. After various adventures, having fallen into the hands of robbers in the English port, and made his way to France in a coal-vessel, he presented himself, on the morning of the 5th of January, 1644, clad in tatters, at the door of the Jesuit college in Rennes. He asked for the father rector, but was told that he was busy and could not be seen. "Tell him, if you please," said Father Jogues, "that a man from Canada would speak a few words with him." The Canada mission was an object of deep interest at this time all through the society, and the father rector, though he was about vesting for mass, ordered the man to be admitted. He asked many questions about the affairs of Canada, and at last inquired if the stranger knew Father Jogues.

"I know him very well," was the reply.

"The Iroquois have taken him," continued the reverend Superior. "Is he dead?"

"No," answered the missionary, "he is alive and at liberty. I am he." Then he fell on his knees and asked the rector's blessing.

His arrival was celebrated, as we might well suppose, with great rejoicing. He was summoned to Paris, where the queen kissed his mutilated hands and the whole court strove to honor him. The blandishments of the great, however, gave no pleasure to this scarred veteran of Christ's army. He longed to be again in the field, and in two or three months he sailed once more for Canada.

In the mean time the missions had fared ill. Violent warfare raged between the Iroquois confederation (of which the Mohawks formed a part) and the Hurons and Algonquins. In one respect and for a short time this was of some benefit to the faith, for the Algonquins, threatened with destruction by their more powerful enemies, became docile, and listened more readily to the exhortations of the French priests. Yet they were rapidly approaching extermination. Whole villages were destroyed in the periodical incursions of the Iroquois. The neophytes were massacred. The missionaries were intercepted on their journeys. Father Joseph Bressani was captured on his way to the Huron country in the spring of 1644. One of his Indian companions was roasted and eaten before his eyes. The father himself was beaten with sticks until he was covered with blood. His hands were fearfully mutilated. His fingers were slit; one day a nail would be burned off; the next, a joint. He was made to walk on hot cinders. He was given up to the children to be tortured. He was hanged by the feet with chains. He was tied to the ground, and food was placed upon his naked body that the dogs might lacerate him as they ate. Ten weeks afterward he wrote to the father-general at Rome: "I do not know if your paternity will recognize the handwriting of one whom you once knew very well.The letter is soiled and ill-written; because the writer has only one finger of his right hand left entire, and cannot prevent the blood from his wounds, which are still open, from staining the paper. His ink is gunpowder mixed with water, and his table is the earth." He survived and was carried to Fort Orange, where the Dutch ransomed him and sent him back to France. The next spring he too returned and succeeded in reaching the Hurons. Father de Nouë, whom we have mentioned as one of the first companions of Le Jeune, perished in the snow in February, 1646, on the way from Quebec to a French port at the mouth of the river Richelieu, where he was to hear confessions. A peace had indeed been concluded with the Mohawks just before Jogues' return, but a peace with them could be no better than a precarious truce. Couture, who had been with Father Jogues in his captivity, and become a person of consideration with the tribe, had rendered good service in the negotiation, and would continue to serve his countrymen to the utmost of his power; yet it was felt that to keep the Indians to their engagements an agent of still higher personal character was required, and Father Jogues was assigned to the duty. "I shall go," he wrote to a friend, "but I shall not return."

His mission was partly political, but mainly, of course, religious. By the advice of an Algonquin convert, he exchanged his cassock for a civilian's doublet, not wishing to irritate the savages by a premature declaration of his heavenly message. He held a council with the head men of the Mohawks, presented the gifts of the Canadian government, and then set about founding a new mission, to be called the Mission of the Martyrs. There were three principal clans among the Mohawks—those of the Bear, the Tortoise, and the Wolf. The first were bitter foes of the French, and eager for war; the others stood out resolutely for peace. Many were the fierce debates around their council-fires whether the missionary should be killed or not. At last, one day, a band of warriors of the Bear clan met the priest and a young lay companion of his, named Lalande, in the woods, stripped them, and led them in triumph to the town. There they were beaten with sticks, and strips of flesh were cut from Father Jogues' back and arms. In the evening, the priest was sitting in one of the lodges, when an Indian entered and invited him to a feast. To refuse would have been an insult. He arose and followed the messenger to the cabin of the chief of the Bears. As he bent his head to enter, a savage, concealed within, clove his skull with a hatchet, the weapon cutting through the arm of an Indian who tried to avert the blow. The martyr sank at the feet of his murderer. His head was instantly cut off, and stuck upon the palisade which enclosed the town, and his body was thrown into the river. The next day Lalande was killed, and his remains received the same treatment.

The murder of Father Jogues was the signal for a reopening of the war with the colonists and their allies, and among the first victims were the Algonquin converts. We have no space to relate the story of the surprise of their villages, the shocking torture of the captives, or the massacre of the children, the old, and the infirm. But some of the prisoners escaped, and the adventures of one of them were so interesting that we cannot resist the temptation to copy them from the animated narrative of Parkman.This was an Algonquin woman named Marie, whose husband had been burned with other captives. One night, while the savages were dancing and shrieking round the flames in which one of her countrymen was being consumed, she stole away into the forest. The ground was covered with snow, so, lest her footsteps should betray her, she retraced the beaten path in which the Indians had already travelled until she came near a village of the Onondagas. There she hid herself in a thicket, and at night crept forth to grope in the snow for a few grains of corn left from the last year's harvest. She saw many Indians from her lurking-place, and once a tall savage with an axe came directly toward her, but she murmured a prayer and he turned away. Certain of death if discovered, and disheartened at the prospect of the long and terrible journey through the frozen wilderness to Canada, she tried to commit suicide by hanging herself with her girdle, but it broke twice, and she plucked up heart. With no clothing but a thin tunic, she travelled on, directing her course by the sun, and living upon roots and the inner bark of trees, and now and then catching tortoises in the brooks. At night she kindled a fire by the friction of two sticks in some deep nook of the forest, warmed herself, cooked her food, if she had any, and said her rosary. Once she discovered a party of Iroquois warriors, but she lay concealed and they passed without observing her. Following their trail, she found their bark canoe by the bank of a river. It was too large for her to manage alone, but with a hatchet which she had picked up in a deserted camp she reduced it to a convenient size, and floated down the stream to the St. Lawrence. Her journey was now much easier. There were eggs of wild fowl to be found along the shore, and fish in the river, which she speared with a sharp pole. She even killed deer by driving them into the water, chasing them in her canoe, and striking them on the head with her hatchet. At the end of two months she reached Montreal, after hardships which no woman but an Indian could have supported.

The central mission of Sainte Marie was meanwhile in the flush of prosperity. The buildings included a church, a kitchen, a refectory, large rooms for spiritual instruction and the exercises of retreat, and lodgings for at least sixty persons. Around these principal houses ran a fortified line of palisades and masonry, outside which was a hospital and a large bark hut for the reception of wandering Indians. Here every alternate week the converts from all the Huron villages gathered in immense crowds to attend divine service, celebrated with all the pomp which the resources of the mission allowed, and to partake for three days of the bounteous hospitality of the good fathers. In times of pestilence and famine they flocked hither for relief, and at one time, in a year of scarcity, as many as three thousand received food and shelter at Sainte Marie. Hither, also, two or three times every year, the Jesuits—now twenty-two in number, including four lay-brothers—came together from their outlying missions, to refresh their souls by mutual counsel, and gather strength in prayer and meditation for the work of the next twelve months. To assist in the manual labor of the establishment there were seven hired men and four boys, and as a defence against the dreaded Iroquois the commandant of Quebec had sent them a guard of eight soldiers.They received also much valuable help from thedonnés, or "given men"—French laymen, who from pure zeal devoted themselves to the service of the mission, travelling with the fathers on their dangerous journeys, and sometimes sharing—like Goupil, called "the good Réné"—in the glories of their martyrdom. These pious men—"seculars in garb," Father Gamier called them, "but religious in heart"—received no pay except a bare maintenance. There were eleven smaller missions dependent upon Sainte Marie, eight among the Hurons and three among the Algonquins. At several of them there was a church where every morning a bell summoned the dusky converts to Mass, and every evening they met again for prayer. Despite the enormous difficulties of transportation through that tangled wilderness, the fathers had found means to carry with them from place to place large colored pictures, gay draperies, and many a showy ornament for the altar or the walls, which they well knew would invest their rude chapels with an almost irresistible attraction for the savage mind. In many villages the Christians, by the year 1649, outnumbered the pagans. Sundays and feast-days were almost wholly devoted to religious exercises; and if the Indians had not wholly abandoned their barbarous and cruel practices, it is certain that the ferocity even of those who refused to become Christians was sensibly tamed.

But the season of good fortune which followed the martyrdom of Goupil and Jogues was destined to be but short. The increasing hostility of the Iroquois was to be the destruction at once of the Huron nation and of the high hopes which had been built upon that people. Yet it may be questioned whether the Jesuits would have long been left at peace even had these terrible foes kept within the range of their own villages. Even among the Hurons the murmurs of suspicion and dislike had begun to be heard again. The French ceremony of "prayer," said the savages, had blighted the crops, and the mystic rites of the priests had brought famine and desolation upon the nation. There was even a story, widely believed in the Huron lodges, that an Indian girl, baptized before her death, had been to the French heaven, and, after suffering horrible torments there from the pale faces, had made her escape back to earth to deter her countrymen from rushing to the same fate. A young Frenchman in the service of the mission had been treacherously murdered; and though the missionaries by a wise show of resolution had compelled the nation to make satisfaction for the outrage by the ceremonious offering of numerous strings of wampum, and had thus restored their waning influence, it was clear that their position at the best was extremely precarious, and that persecution, if it came not from abroad, would pretty surely be commenced at home. The catastrophe, therefore, when it came, found the priests not unprepared. For years they had carried their lives in their hands, ready to cast them down at any moment. For years they had walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and in the midst of the dark river and in the bitter waters they knew that the almighty Arm was stretched forth to hold them up.

The final act opened at the village of Teanaustayé, or St. Joseph, on the south-eastern frontier of the Huron country.On the 4th of July, 1648, Father Daniel, fresh from his annual retreat at Sainte Marie, had just finished Mass, and his congregation were still kneeling in the church, when the Iroquois burst upon the town and attacked the palisade which surrounded it. The priest, after rallying the warriors to defend their homes, ran from house to house urging unbelievers to repent. A panic-stricken crowd fell at his knees and declared themselves Christians, and he baptized them with water sprinkled from a wet handkerchief, for there was no time to do more. When the palisade was broken down, he showed his flock how to escape at the other end of the town. "I will stay here," said he. "We shall meet again in heaven." He would not fly while there was a soul to be saved in the village. In his priestly vestments he went out to the church-door to meet the Iroquois. For a moment they paused in amazement. Then, pierced with scores of arrows and a musket-ball through the heart, he fell, gasping the name of Jesus. The savages hacked his lifeless body, bathed their faces in his blood to make them brave, and consumed in one great conflagration the village, the church, and the sacred remains.

The following March the missions of St. Louis and St. Ignace were burned by the same terrible enemy. At the latter were two of the Jesuits; Brébeuf, sturdy offspring of a warrior race, with all the soldierly characteristics of his Norman ancestors; and Lalemant, delicate in body and in spirit, yet in the glorious cause no whit less courageous and resolute than his stronger companion. They were seized by their captors, and Brébeuf was bound to a stake, and, as he ceased not to exhort and encourage the convert prisoners, the Iroquois scorched him from head to foot to silence him. That failing, they cut away his lower lip, and thrust a red-hot iron down his throat, yet still he held himself erect without uttering a groan. Lalemant, led out to be burned, with strips of bark smeared with pitch tied about his naked body, broke loose from his guards and cast himself at the hero's feet, crying out in a broken voice: "We are made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men." He was immediately seized and made fast to a post, and as the flames enveloped him he threw up his arms to heaven with a shriek of agony. Brébeuf, with a collar of red-hot hatchets round his neck and with his hands and nose cut off, had to witness the tortures of his friend and could not even utter a word of comfort. An apostate Indian in the crowd cried out, "Baptize them! baptize them!" Instantly kettles were placed upon the fire, the priests' scalps were torn away, and scalding water was poured slowly over their bleeding heads. Brébeuf's feet were next cut off, strips of flesh were sliced from his limbs and eaten before his eyes, and at last, when life was nearly extinct, the savages laid open his breast, tore out his heart and devoured it, and thronged around the mangled corpse to drink the blood of so magnificent and indomitable a hero. His torments had lasted four hours. Father Lalemant, though a man of extreme feebleness of constitution, survived the torture seventeen hours, writhing through the night in the most excruciating sufferings, until an Iroquois, surfeited with the long entertainment, killed him with a hatchet.

This massacre was the death-knell of the Huron mission—of the mission, that is to say, in the form and extent in which the society had originally designed it.Other villages were burned; two other missionaries, Gamier and Chabanel, were martyred; the entire establishment was withdrawn from Sainte Marie; and the miserable remnant of the Hurons was scattered far and wide. A portion of them, after a winter of starvation, embarked with the surviving missionaries for Quebec, and near that city founded a settlement, in which the Christian faith was preserved and is cherished to this day. Others voluntarily abandoned their nationality and were adopted into the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois, where eighteen years afterward many of them were found to be still good Catholics.

The story which we have briefly traced in its most striking outlines is but one chapter in the long history of the labors, the sufferings, and the glorious achievements of the Jesuits in North America. We would gladly have followed them further in their journeys through the wilderness, traced them with a Huron remnant in the far west, and lingered for a while about their headquarters at Quebec watching the growth of the central establishment which sent forth its apostles to the great lakes on the one hand, and through the forests of Maine to the sea-coast on the other. But we must bring our story to a close. The record of their work has been well preserved in the three books whose titles we have placed at the head of this article. The history by Mr. John G. Shea, to whom Catholics in general and American Catholics especially are under the deepest obligations for his careful and successful researches, is the fullest and, we doubt not, the most correct. The narrative of Mr. Parkman, which we have followed closely, giving in some parts of our article merely an abstract of what he has told in picturesque detail, is written in a charming style, and is valuable as testimony to the exalted character of the missionaries from one who has no sympathy with their faith and is unable to appreciate their piety.

The Iroquois, in destroying the Huron nation, and with it the Algonquins, to whom the Hurons had hitherto served as a bulwark, had destroyed the Jesuit scheme of a Christian Indian empire; but the labor of the missionaries had not been in vain. The seed which they had planted was not allowed to die. The exiles carried the sacred deposit of faith with them in their wanderings, as the Israelites in the wilderness bore the ark of the covenant. Years afterward, when Father Grelon, one of those who escaped from the Iroquois massacre, was travelling in the heart of Tartary, he met a Huron woman who had learned the truth from him in the little chapel at Sainte Marie, and after the final catastrophe had been sold from tribe to tribe until she reached the interior of Asia. She knelt at his feet, and in her native tongue, which she had not spoken nor the priest heard for years, she made her confession. Nor was it only in the fidelity of individuals that the missionaries reaped their harvest. When, after the ruin of their enterprise on the shores of the Georgian Bay, they sent their undaunted preachers among that terrible people who had wrought such havoc, how can we doubt that the blood of Brébeuf and his brethren was permitted to fructify their labors, and that the saintly men who gave their sufferings for the poor savage during so many years pleaded and prevailed in the same great cause after they had entered into their reward?

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