[wiTiiKow] JESUIT MISSIONS OF CANADA 211 



Before spring, harassed by attacks of the Iroquois and wasted by 

 pestilence, half of the number had died. Day by day the faithful mis- 

 sionaries visited the sick, exhorted the living, absolved the dying, and 

 celebrated the sacraments in the crowded chapel, which was daily filled 

 ten or twelve times. Night by night, in frost and snow and bitter 

 storm, through the livelong hours the sentry paced his weary round. 



During the winter the Iroquois ravaged the mainland, burning 

 villages and slaughtering the inhabitants. St. Jean, a town of some 

 six hundred families, which had hitherto resisted attack amid the fast- 

 nesses of the Blue Mountains, not far from the present town of Colling- 

 wood, was taken and destroyed. Here Père Garnier, the scion of a 

 noble family of Paris, shared the heroic fate of Daniel, the first martyr 

 of the mission. He was slain in the act of absolving a dying Indian. 



With the opening of spring, the pinchings of hunger drove the 

 starving Hurons from Isle St. Joseph to the mainland. The relentless 

 Iroquois were awaiting them. Of the large party wiho crossed but one 

 man escaped to tell the tale of blood. The whole country was a land 

 of horror, a place of massacre.^ There was nothing but despair on 

 every side. More than ten thousand Hurons had already perished. 

 Famine, or an enemy more cruel still, everywhere confronted them. 

 They resolved to forsake their country and to fly to some distant region, 

 in order to escape extermination by their foes. Many of them "be- 

 sought the Jesuits to lead them to an asylum beneath the guns of Que- 

 bec, where they might worship God in peace. The Fathers consulted 

 much together, but more "with God,- and engaged in prayer for forty 

 consecutive hours. They resolved to abandon the mission. Dread of 

 the Iroquois hastened their retreat. 



" It was not without tears," writes Kagueneau, '' that we left the 

 country of our hearts and hopes, which, already red with the blood of 

 our brethren, promised us a like happiness, opened for us the gate of 

 heaven." ^ ' The pious toils of fifteen years seemed frustrated, but, 

 with devout submission, the Father Superior writes, " Whom the Lord 

 loveth He chasteneth." They were accompanied in their retreat, by 

 way of French River, Lake Nipissing, and the Ottawa, by three hundred 

 Christian Hurons, the sad relics of a nation once so populous.* Along 

 the sihores where had recently dwelt eight or ten thousand of their 

 countrymen not one remained.^ 



^ " N'estoit plus qu'une terre d'horreur, et un lieu de massacre." — Rague- 

 neau, Relation des Elirons, 1650, p. 22. 



* " Nous consultions ensemble, mais plus encore avec Dieu." — 76. 

 » Relations, 1650, p. 26. 



* "Tristes reliques d'une nation autrefois si peuplée."— / 6. 

 " " Il n'en restoit pas mesme un seul."— /6. 



