38 LE JEUNE AND THE HUNTERS. [1633-34 



desperate. Beavers and porcupines were scarce, 

 and the snow was not deep enough for hunting 

 the moose. Night and day the medicine-drums 

 and medicine-songs resounded from the wigwams, 

 mingled with the wail of starving children. The 

 hunters grew weak and emaciated ; and, as after a 

 forlorn march the wanderers encamped once more 

 in the lifeless forest, the priest remembered that it 

 was the eve of Christmas. " The Lord gave us for 

 our supper a porcupine, large as a sucking pig, 

 and also a rabbit. It was not much, it is true, for 

 eighteen or nineteen persons; but the Holy Virgin 

 and St. Joseph, her glorious spouse, were not so 

 well treated, on this very day, in the stable of 

 Bethlehem." ^ 



On Christmas Day, the despairing hunters, again 

 unsuccessful, came to pray succor from Le Jeune. 

 Even the Apostate had become tractable, and the 

 famished sorcerer was ready to try the efficacy 

 of an appeal to the deity of his rival. A bright 

 hope possessed the missionary. He composed two 

 prayers, which, with the aid of the repentant Pi- 

 erre, he translated into Algonquin. Then he hung 

 against the side of the hut a napkin which he had 

 brought with him, and against the napkin a cru- 

 cifix and a reliquary, and, this done, caused all 

 the Indians to kneel before them, with hands raised 

 and clasped. He now read one of the prayers, and 



1 "Pour nostre souper, N, S. nous donna vn Porc-espic gros comrae 

 vn cochon de lait, et vn lieure ; c'estoit pen pour dix-huit ou vingt per- 

 sonnes que nous estions, il est vray, mais la saincte Vierge et son glori- 

 eux Espoux sainct losepli ne furent pas si bien traictez a mesme iour dans 

 Testable de Bethlcem.' —Relation, 1634, 71. 



