28 LE JEJJKE AND THE HUNTERS. [1633-34. 



to the temperature of an oven. But these evils 

 were Hght, when compared to the mtolerable 

 plague of smoke. During a snow-storm, and often 

 at other times, the wigwam was tilled with fumes 

 so dense, stifling, and acrid, that all its inmates 

 were forced to lie flat on their faces, breathing 

 through mouths in contact with the cold earth. 

 Their throats and nostrils felt as if on fire ; their 

 scorched eyes streamed with tears ; and when Le 

 Jeune tried to read, the letters of his breviary 

 seemed printed in blood. The dogs were not 

 an unmixed evil, for, by sleeping on and around 

 him, they kept him warm at night; but, as an 

 offset to this good service, they walked, ran, and 

 jumped over him as he lay, snatched the food 

 from his birchen dish, or, in a mad rush at some 

 bone or discarded morsel, now and then overset 

 both dish and missionary. 



Sometimes of an evening he would leave the 

 filthy den, to read his breviary in peace by the light 

 of the moon. In the forest around sounded the 

 sharp crack of frost-riven trees ; and from the hori- 

 zon to the zenith shot up the silent meteors of the 

 northern lights, in whose fitful flashings the awe- 

 struck Indians beheld the dancing of the spirits 

 of the dead. The cold gnawed him to the bone ; 

 and, his devotions over, he turned back shivering. 

 The illummed hut, from many a chink and crevice, 

 shot forth into the gloom long streams of light 

 athwart the twisted boughs. He stooped and en- 

 tered. All within glowed red and fiery around the 

 blazing pine-knots, where, like brutes in their ken- 



