52 W. H. WITHROW: 



the service of the Church, the Pope granted a special dispensation from this canonical 

 disability, and the intrepid missionary hastened to renew his labours, " in the midst of a 

 depraved nation," as the contemporary chronicler expresses it, " without Mass, Sacrifice, 

 Confession, or Sacraments." 



To ratify a treaty of pi?ace and to establish a mission among his former tormentors, 

 Father .Togues, with Sieur Bourdon, a French engineer, and six Indians, left Three Rivers 

 on May 16th, 1046. He seems to have had a prescience of his approaching fate. " I go 

 and I shall not return," he wrote to the Sui^erior of the Order, "but I shall be happy if 

 God will accomplish the sacrifice I have begun, and if the little blood I have spent in 

 that land, be as the earnest of that which I Avill give with all my heart from all the 

 veins of my body." ' 



The projected enterprise was designated, with prophetic significance, " The Mission 

 of Martyrs." Though at first with some natural shrinkings of the flesh which had suffered 

 so much, Jogues at length went with joy to cultivate the vine which he had watered 

 with his own blood," and, as he expresses it, to suck honey from the rock.' He again 

 traversed the route marked by his bloody footprints four years before, and on the eve of 

 Corpus Christi reached Lake Horicon, to which he therefore gave the name of Lac du 

 Saint Sacrament. Eight days after, they reached the Iroquois towns, and multitudes 

 thronged to see the object of their former cruelty. A council was held and presents 

 exchanged amid many declarations of friendship. Jogues went the rounds of the wig- 

 wams, instructed and confessed some Christian captives, and baptized some dying Iro- 

 quois. He soon returned to Canada to report the success of his embassy, having promised 

 to return before winter. On September 24th, he again left Three Rivers to fulfil his 

 pledge. But the short-lived truce was broken. The pent-up rage of the Iroquois burst 

 like a hailstorm on a field of ripened grain and destroyed the hopes of a harvest of souls. 



Jogues had left with the Iroquois, for his use on his return, a small box containing 

 clothes and other necessaries. During his absence sickness visited the town, and the 

 corn-fields were smitten Avith blight. The superstitious fears of the Indians attributed 

 those evils to the malign influence of Jogues and his mysterious box. An angry war- 

 party went forth to take summary vengeance on the hapless missionary. He was inter- 

 cepted and dragged to the nearest Iroquois town, stripped naked, and made to run the 

 terrible gauntlet amid a perfect hail of blows. From the back and arms of Jogues his 

 persecutors cut strips of quivering flesh, saying, "Let us see whether this is the flesh of a 

 sorcerer." At night he was summoned to the presence of the chief, and as, mangled and 

 bleeding, he entered the lodge, a savage buried his tomahawk in the missionary's brain. 

 His head was immediately hacked off and affixed to the palisade of the town. The Dutch 

 at Fort Orange wrote an account of the murder to Montmagny, the French Governor at 

 Quebec ; but it was not till eight months afterwards that the tragic tidings was received. 



Thus, on October 18th, 1646, in the thirtjr-uinth year of his age, the intrepid martyr- 

 missionary completed the sacrifice begun lour years before. 



In loving eulogy, his Superior, Lalemant, sets forth the lowliness and self-abasement 



' Iho et non redibo, etc. Relations, 1G47, p. 37. 



- Cette vigne qu'il auoit arrosée de son sang. Ilid., 1014, p. 73. 



" Sv/jil iml de pelra. Ibid. 



