THE ADVENTUEES OP ISAAC JOGUES. 49 



After this Jogues' life hung by a single hair. He became the common servant, or 

 rather the slave of the village — a hew^er of wood, a bearer of burdens, a performer of the 

 most severe and menial taski^. Half starved and half clad, his flesh was lacerated by briars, 

 and he was gnawed to the bone by piercing cold. Amid all his tribulations Jogues found 

 his only consolation in prayer. He remained sometimes eight or ten hours on his knees 

 in the snow before a cross which he had carved upon a tree. These spiritual exercises he 

 continued for forty days, withoxit house, fire, or any covering but the vault of heaven or 

 the boughs of trees.' His devotions being discovered, they became the cause of increased 

 persecution. He was regarded as an accursed sorcerer. His prayers were a magical incan- 

 tation, thwarting the skill of the hunter and the A'alour of the bravest warrior. He 

 became the object of cruel indignity, the butt of brutal sport. With unwearied patience 

 he sought to win his cruel tyrants to accept the doctrine of the cross, and found a com- 

 pensation for all his toils in the occasional opportunity of baptizing, in the hour of death, 

 some repentant savage. He nerved himself for his continued living-sacrifice by the noble 

 words of St. Bernard, Non immerilo vitam ille sibi vindicut nos/rain qui pro nobis dedit el suam. 



Jogues became the drudge of the Indian women, themselves the slaves of their savage 

 lords. Yet he nursed, with an iron patience and a golden charity," the wretch who, at 

 his capture, had so cruelly mangled his fingers, but who was now sick of a loathsome 

 disease. Yet, the missionary's life was continuall}' menaced. He was actually appointed 

 to be sacrificed with horrid pagan rites, when a number of captured Huron prisoners 

 offered more cong-enial victims. One of them Jogues baptized amid the flames under the 

 pretence of giving her a drink of water. During his captivity he baptized in all some 

 sixty souls. " That," he says, " is my only consolation." 



Presents and the offer of a ransom for the missionary came from Canada ; but, while 

 accepting the gifts, his captors refused his release. Jogues wrote several letters, which 

 he sent by friendly savages, to be attached to poles on the bank of the St. Lawrence, in 

 the hope that his countrymen might find them. He also found means to warn the fort at 

 Three Rivers of a menaced attack. As the result, the Iroc[uois were repulsed with loss. 

 They returned breathing slaughter against Jogues. He know the danger he had incurred. 

 " I foresaw my death," he wrote, " bi\t it seemed sweet and welcome, since oflFered for the 

 benefit and comfort of my countrymen.' 



Jogues was, at this juncture, with a fishing party on the Hudson near the Dutch set- 

 tlement of Eeusselaerswyck or Fort Orange, a hamlet of about thirty houses, and a 

 hundred inhabitants, on the site where Albany now stands. Here he learned that the 

 enraged Irocjuois, betrayed as they conceived by his letters, had resolved on his destruction. 

 Yan Curler, the chief factor of the Fort, urged him to fly from the menaced danger, and 

 offered him passage in a sloop bound for Bordeaux or Eochelle. "My heart," writes the 

 priest, " was perplexed at these words, doubting if it would not be more for the glory of 

 God, that I should endure the fire and furv of these savages for the salvation of some 



' II passoit les huit et dix heure.s en oraison, demeurant pour la pluspart du temps à genoux sur la neige, deuant 

 vne croix qu'il auait luy-mesme dressée; il continua ses exercices ijuarant iours durant, sans maison, sans feu, sans 

 autre abrj- que le Ciel et les bois. Ilnd., p. 29. 



- Avec vne patience de fer et vne charité toute d'or. Ibid., p. 31. 



' Le preuoyois ma mort, mais elle me sembloit douce et agréable, employée jwur le bien public et pour la con- 

 solation de nos François. Ihid., 104.3, p. 75. 



Sec. II., 1885. 7. 



