48 W. H. WITHEOW: 



at Fort Orange. As he traversed this " narrow road of Paradise," ' a true via crucis to the 

 heroic confessor, Jogues consoled himself with the thought that he was walking in the 

 footsteps of his Lord and Master. With mangled and bleeding bodies the victims entered 

 " that Babylon," the Indian village. Jogues and his three white companions were made 

 to mount naked, on a scaffold preparatory to further tortures. " We are made a spectacle 

 unto the world, and to angels, and to men," exclaimed the i:)ious Jesuit.- 



At night they were led to the wigwams to be the sport of the savage brood of these 

 human hyenas. They were laid on the ground, their limbs outstretched in the form of a 

 St. Andrew's cross, and bound so tightly to four stakes that the cords cut to the bone. The 

 youthful amateurs in torture placed burning coals on their naked bodies, exulting in the 

 anguished efforts of their victims to shake them otf. These atrocities were repeated for 

 three days and three nights. " My Grod, what nights they were," exclaimed Jogues, in 

 shuddering recollection of their agony ; " I passed throu.gh fire and water for the love of 

 God." From town to town the hapless victims were driven, to repeat the spectacle of 

 torture. Jogues endured a " Gehenna of anguish," by being bound to a cross, his whole 

 weight hanging on his wrists. Released from his agony he found opportunity to instruct 

 some Huron captives just taken, and finding a few drops of water on an ear of green corn 

 thrown him to eat, he baptized his new converts. He rejoiced that, though in bonds him- 

 self, the word of God was not bound. ' 



Three of the Hurons were burned. Couture was rescued from a similar fate, by adop- 

 tion into an Iroquois family in the place of a relative who had been slain. Jogues and 

 Goupil were appointed to death. They sought unceasingly to rescue little children from 

 the doom of death eternal by the administration, by stealth or guile, of the waters of bap- 

 tism, whereby, as they lihrased it, dying infants were changed from little savages to little 

 angels. Goupil was detected making the sign of the cross on a child's brow. " Kill that 

 dog," * exclaimed its superstitious grandsire to a young brave, " that sign brings naught 

 but evil." 



Goupil and Jogues were soon waylaid in the forest, whither they had retired for 

 prayer, and Goupil was despatched by a blow of a tomahawk. Jogues expected to share 

 his fate but was ordered back to the village. Wishing to pay the last sad rites of burial 

 to the remains of his friend, Jogues sought them far and wide. At length he found the 

 body in a deep ravine, stripped naked and half eaten by dogs. He covered it with stones 

 to protect it from the prowling wolves. Next day he returned to bury it, but the swollen 

 river or savage malice had removed the mangled remains. " Crouched by the pitiless 

 stream," says a sympathetic narrator of the event, " he mingled his tears with its waters, 

 and, in a voice broken with groans, chanted the service of the dead." In the early spring 

 he found, lower down the stream, the bleaching skeleton of his friend, and gathering the 

 gnawed bones as sacred relics, with reverence kissed them and hid them in a hollow tree, 

 hoping if ever he should make his escape, to give them Christian burial.*^ 



' Chemin éstroit du Paradis. Relations. 



^ Spcclaeiilum. facti nimus mundo et Angelis et hominibus. Ibid., p. 22. These were also the dying -n'ords of Gabriel 

 Lalemant, as he and Brcbeuf burned at the stake in the Huron country a few years later. 



' Vcrbum Dei non eut alligatiem. Ibid., 1644, p. 74. 



* Va t'en tuer ce chien ! Lalemant, IbiiL, 1647, p. 25. 



° Le Père retire ses sacres despoûilles, les baise auec respect, les cache dans le creux d'vn arbre jiour les transporter 

 auec soy, si tant est qu'on le niist en liberté. Lalemant, Ibid., 1047, p. 25. 



