206 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Sle. Agnès, Ste. Catherine, Ste. Cécile, Ste. Geneviève, Ste. Madeleine, 

 Sle. Thérèse, and several others. 



The most important of these was that of Ste. Marie, established 

 in 1640, on a small stream, now known as the river Wye, which flows 

 into Gloucester Bay, itself an inlet of the Georgian Bay, not far from 

 the present town of Penetanguishene. The outlines of the fortifica- 

 tion, for it was both fort and mission, may still be traced amid the 

 forest, which has long since overgrown the spot. A wall of combined 

 masonry and palisades, flanked by bastions at the angles, enclosed a 

 space of some thirty by sixty yards, containing a church, a mission 

 residence, a kitchen, and a refectory. Without the walls were a huge 

 house for Indian visitors, a hospital for the sick, and a cemetery for 

 the dead. Sometimes as many as sixty white men were assembled at 

 the mission, among whom were eight or ten soldiers, as many hired 

 labourers, about a score of men serving without pay, and as many 

 priests; most of the latter, however, were generally engaged in the 

 various out-missions. The demands upon the hospitality of Ste. Marie 

 were very great. As many as six thousand Christian Indians were 

 lodged and fed in a single year. But the Fathers bestowed such care 

 on agriculture, sometimes themselves working with spade and mattock, 

 that in 1648 they had provisions laid up sufficient for three years. 

 They had also a considerable quantity of live-stock, including fowls, 

 swine, and even horned cat-tie, brought with infinite toil through the 

 wilderness. 



But this prosperity was destined to be rudely interrupted, and to 

 have a tragic close. 



The terrible Iroquois, who dwelt to the south of Lake Ontario, in 

 what is now Central New York, the most warlike and cruel of all the 

 Indian races, the scourge and terror alike of the French and English 

 settlements, waged perpetual war against their hereditary foes, the 

 Hurons. Urged by implacable hate, large war parties would travel on. 

 snow-shoes through a pathless forest for hundreds of miles to bum and 

 destroy the Huron villages and indiscriminately massacre their in- 

 habitants — not merely the warriors, but the old men, the women, the 

 little children. No distance was too great, no perils too formidable, if 

 they might only glut their thirst for Huron blood. Even a single 

 Mohawk lurked for weeks near the walls of Quebec or Montreal, for 

 the opportunity to win a Huron scalp. 



With the persistence of a sleuth hound, a small war party of Iro- 

 quois travelled twenty days' Journey north of the St. Lawrence in mid- 

 winter to attack a Huron camp, and wantonly butchered its inhabitants. 

 The ubiquitous and blood-thirsty wretches infested the forest; lay in 

 ambush at the portages of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence, and sprang. 



