98 The Ottawa Naturalist. [August 



displayed, among them being many robes of the richest fur that 

 had been prepared, years before, in anticipation of this ceremony. 

 The kettles were then slung and feasting went on until the 

 middle of the afternoon, when the bundles of bones were again 

 taken up. Then, at a signal from the chiefs, the crowd rushed 

 forward from all sides, like warriors at the storming of a palisaded 

 town, climbed, by means of rude ladders, to the scaffolding and 

 hung their dead, together with the funeral gifts, to the cross- 

 poles. Then they retired and the chiefs, from the scaffolding, 

 made speeches to the people, praising the dead and extolling the 

 gifts given in their honor. 



During this speech making, the vast grave was being lined 

 throughout with robes of beaver skin, with three copper kettles 

 in the centre. The Ijodies, which had been left whole, were then 

 cast into the pit amidst great confusion and excitement, and, 

 as darkness was now coming on, the ceremony was adjourned 

 until the next day, the assemblage remaining about the great 

 watch-fires, which blazed about the edge of the clearing. 



Just before daylight, the Jesuits, who had retired to the 

 village, were aroused by an uproar fit to wake the dead. Guided 

 by the noise, they hastened back to the clearing where they 

 beheld a spectacle that surpassed anything they had ever wit- 

 nessed. Brebeuf says that nothing had ever figured to him 

 better the confusion among the damned. One of the bundles 

 of bones had fallen from the poles into the pit and precipitated the 

 conclusion of the rite. Huge fires which blazed about the clearing 

 lit up a fearful scene. On and about the scaffold, wild forms, howling 

 like demons, hurled the packages of bones into the pit, where a 

 number of others moved about amidst the ghastly shower and 

 with long poles arranged the bones in their places. Then the 

 pit was covered with logs and earth and the ceremony concluded 

 with a funeral chant that resembled the wail of a legion of lost 

 spirits. It was the death song of a lost people, the knell of a 

 passing race. 



One can imagine, as a spectator of this weird scene, the 

 stalwart form of Brebeuf, towering in the majesty of his fore- 

 doomed martyrdom, and glorious in the might of that indom- 

 itable courage that triumphed, in the hour of his death, oyer 

 the ingenuity of his tormentors, evolving in his mind such subtle 

 arguments as might subordinate to higher ideals the rude Nature- 

 worship of Huronian clanship, and win to the service of his 

 Master these hordes of heathendom. 



Residents of the Capital will be surprised to learn that a 

 Htiron Feast of the Dead, similar to the one already described, 

 was once held in Ottawa, on the spot that now occupies the 

 north-west angle formed by the intersection of Wellington and 



