180 PRIEST AND PAGAN. [1638-40. 



season, by Indian corn roasted in the ear. They 

 used no salt wliatever. They could bring their cum- 

 brous pictures, ornaments, and vestments through 

 the savage journey of the Ottawa ; but they could 

 not bring the common necessaries of life. By day, 

 they read and studied by the light that streamed 

 in through the large smoke-holes in the roof, — at 

 night, by the blaze of the fire. Their only candles 

 were a few of wax, for the altar. They cultivated 

 a patch of ground, but raised nothing on it except 

 wheat for making the sacramental bread. Their 

 food was supplied by the Indians, to whom they 

 gave, in return, cloth, knives, awls, needles, and 

 various trinkets. Their supply of wine for the 

 Eucharist was so scanty, that they limited them- 

 selves to foiu' or five drops for each mass.^ 



Their life was regulated with a conventual strict- 

 ness. At four in the morning, a bell roused them 

 from the sheets of bark on which they slept. 

 Masses, private devotions, reading religious books, 

 and breakfasting, filled the time until eight, when 

 they opened their door and admitted the Indians. 

 As many of these proved intolerable nuisances, 

 they took what Lalemant calls the lionnete liberty 

 of turning out the most intrusive and impractica- 



1 The above particulars are drawn from a long letter of Fran9ois Du 

 Peron to liis brother, Joseph-Inibert Du Peron, dated at La Conception 

 (Ossossanc), April 27, 1639, and from a letter, equally long, of Chaumonot 

 to Father Philippe Nappi, dated Du Pays des Hurons, May 26, 1640. Both 

 are in Carayon. These private letters of the Jesuits, of which many are 

 extant, in some (3ases written on birch-bark, are invaluable as illustrations 

 of the subject. 



The Jesuits soon learned to make wine from wild grapes. Those in 

 Maine and Acadia, at a later period, made good candles from the waxy 

 fruit of the shrub known locally as the " bayberrv." 



