112 PEKSECUTION, [1637 



One is forced to wonder at, if not to admire, the 

 energy with which these priests and their scarcely 

 less zealous attendants ^ toiled to carry their pic- 

 tures and ornaments through the most arduous of 

 journeys, where the traveller was often famished 

 from the sheer difficulty of transporting provisions. 



A great event had called forth all this prepara- 

 tion. Of the many baptisms achieved by the 

 Fathers in the course of their indefatigable minis 

 try, the subjects had all been infants, or adults at 

 the point of death ; but at length a Huron, in 

 full health and manhood, respected and influential 

 in his tribe, had been won over to the Faith, 

 and was now to be baptized with solemn cere- 

 monial, in the chapel thus gorgeously adorned. 

 It was a strange scene. Indians were there in 

 throngs, and the house was closely packed: war- 

 riors, old and young, glistening in grease and sun- 

 flower-oil, with uncouth locks, a trifle less coarse 

 than a horse's mane, and faces perhaps smeared 

 "with paint in honor of the occasion ; wenches in 

 gay attire ; hags muffled in a filthy discarded deer- 

 skin, theh leathery visages corrugated with age 

 and malice, and their hard, glittering eyes riveted 

 on the spectacle before them. The priests, no 

 longer in theu' daily garb of black, but radiant 

 in their surplices, the genuflections, the tinkling 



1 The Jesuits on these distant missions were usually attended by 

 followers who had taken no vows, and could leave their service at will, 

 but whose motives were religious, and not mercenary. Probably this was 

 the character of their attendants in the present case. They were known 

 as donnas, or " given men." It appears from a letter of the Jesuit Du 

 Peron, that twelve hired laborers were soon after sent up to tlie mission. 



