[wood] an URSULINE EPIC 17 



few tiny guns aboard their two little ships, while Champlain despaired 

 01 standing a siege on a barrel of fish and half a dozen sacks of potatoes. 

 New France had hardly become even a footnote to history. With what 

 an airy chann of royal condescension does Charles I. add tlie uncon- 

 sidered trifle of '' The County and Lordship of Canada/' to the other 

 estates of good Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling and Baronet of 

 Nova Scotia ! 



But, among her few, Quebec counted almost as many heroes as early 

 Eome or Sparta. And bravest of tjie brave, the Jesuits. Here was an 

 untamed, new, defiant world to wrestle with. And here the Church, 

 Antfeus-like, rose stronger from each fresh contact with the primal earth. 

 Nothing could stop her indomitable pioneers; neither cold nor heat, 

 hunger, thirst and fatigue; not the lurking danger whieh dogged their 

 eveiy step, nor the fiendish death by torture which so many of them 

 suffered ; nor yet the silent, awful isolation in which their work was 

 done. They crossed a waste of waters to enter an even wilder waste 

 ashore. Quebec was, in fact, as much a point of departure and landfall 

 for an inland journey as a coast sea-mark is for an ocean voyage. With- 

 in each new horizon, far and near, the forest veiled the mysteries of 

 Earth as closely as tlie sea; and, like the sea, lay still dn calm, or surged 

 in wash and back-wash of green surf beneath the storm. And, whether 

 in calm or stonn, it closed impenetrably round each man who ventured 

 within its labyrinthine depths. The Iroquois — so tiger-like in craft, 

 stealth, spring and wild ferocity — filled with mortal dread everyone else 

 whose way led through the woods. But not thé Jesuit. He had no 

 human hand to help him there ; yet the bravest soldier was never more 

 confidently eager at the front. As, in the time of Caesar, every Eoman 

 legionary knew that the might of a whole empire lay waiting for his 

 call at need; and as, in Nelson's day, every blockading British man-of- 

 war went boldly into action, single-handed and against any odds, sure 

 that every consort would soon be sailing to the sound of the cannonade ; 

 so every Canadian Jesuit pressed forward undauntedly, among all the 

 ambushes and strongholds of a pitiless foe, ever upheld by the confident 

 belief that he was no mere lost and isolated man, but one of the 

 pioneers and vanguard of the advancing army of the Lord of Hosts. 



The Ursulines held their first triennial election, and their choice 

 naturally fell on La Mère Marie. Their first convent was a mere hovel, 

 near the site of the present Notre Dame des Victoires, and their first 

 Indian school in it was broken up by a terrible attack of small-pox. 

 In 1641, the first stone was laid on the site of the present convent. But 

 the next spring Madame de la Peltrie. burning to carr}' the cross still 



Sec. II., I!t08. 2. 



