146 THE NEUTRALS [1640. 



hardship and danger, and after a stay of four 

 months the two priests resolved to return. On 

 the way, they met a genuine act of kindness. A 

 heavy snow-storm arresting their progress, a Neu- 

 tral woman took them into her lodge, entertained 

 them for two weeks with her best fare, persuaded 

 lier father and relatives to befriend them, and aided 

 them to make a vocabulary of the dialect. Bid- 

 ding their generous hostess farewell, they jour- 

 neyed northward, through the melting snows of 

 spring, and reached vSainte Marie in safety.^ 



The Jesuits had borne all that the human frame 

 seems capable of bearing. They had escaped as 

 by miracle from torture and death. Did their zeal 

 flag or their courage fail? A fervor intense 

 and unquenchable urged them on to more distant 

 and more deadly ventures. The beings, so near 

 to mortal sympathies, so human, yet so divine, 

 in whom their faith impersonated and dramatized 

 the great principles of Christian truth, — vu'gins, 

 saints, and angels, — hovered over them, and held 

 before their raptured sight crowns of glory and 

 garlands of immortal bliss. They burned to do, to 

 suffer, and to die ; and now, from out a living mar- 

 tyrdom, they turned their heroic gaze towards an 



1 Lalemant, in his Relation of 1641, gives the narrative of this mission 

 at length. His account coincides perfectly with the briefer notice of 

 Chaumonot in his Autobiography. Chaumonot describes the difficulties 

 of the journey very graphically in a letter to his friend, Father Nappi, 

 dated Aug. 3, 1640, preserved in Carayon. See also the next letter, 

 Breheuf an T. R. P. Mutio YitellescM, 20 Aout, 1641. 



The Recollet La Roche Dallion had visited the Neutrals fourteen 

 years before, (see Introduction, note,) and, like his two successors, had 

 been seriously endangered by Huron intrigues. 



