Ib42.] HIS ERRAND. 213 



armed parties into ambuscades. They followed 

 like hounds on the trail of travellers and hunters ; 

 broke in upon unguarded camps at midnight ; and 

 lay in wait, for days and weeks, to intercept the 

 Huron traders on their yearly descent to Quebec. 

 Had they joined to their ferocious courage the dis- 

 (iphne and the military knowledge that belong to 

 civilization, they could easily have blotted out New 

 France from the map, and made the banks of the 

 St. Lawrence once more a solitude ; but, though 

 the most formidable of savages, they were savages 

 only. 



In the early mornmg of the second of August, 

 1642,^ twelve Hiu'on canoes were moving slowly 

 along the northern shore of the expansion of the 

 St. Lawrence known as the Lake of St. Peter. 

 There were on board about forty persons, includ- 

 ing four Frenchmen, one of them being the Jesuit, 

 Isaac Jogues, whom we have already followed on 

 his missionary journey to the towns of the Tobacco 

 Nation. In the interval he had not been idle. 

 During the last autumn, (1641,) he, with Father 

 Charles Raymbault, had passed along the shore of 

 Lake Huron northward, entered the strait through 

 which Lake Superior discharges itself, pushed on 

 as far as the Sault Sainte Marie, and preached the 

 Faith to two thousand Ojibwas, and other Algon- 

 quins there assembled.^ He was now on his return 

 from a far more perilous errand. The Huron mis- 

 sion was in a state of destitution. There was need 



i For the date, see Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1647, 18. 

 2 Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1642, 97. 



