226 ISAAC JOGUES. [1642. 



Late in the autumn, a party of the Indians set 

 forth on their yearly deer-hunt, and Jogues was 

 ordered to go with them. Shivering and half 

 famished, he followed them through the chill No- 

 vember forest, and shared their wild bivouac in 

 the depths of the wintry desolation. The game 

 they took was devoted to Areskoui, their god, and 

 eaten in his honor. Jogues would not taste the 

 meat offered to a demon ; and thus he starved in 

 the midst of plenty. At night, when the kettle 

 was slung, and the savage crew made merry around 

 their fire, he crouched in a comer of the hut, 

 gnawed by hunger, and pierced to the bone with 

 cold. They thought his presence unpropitious to 

 their hunting, and the women especially hated 

 him. His demeanor at once astonished and in- 

 censed his masters. He brought them fire-wood, 

 like a squaw ; he did then- bidding without a mur- 

 mur, and patiently bore their abuse ; but when they 

 mocked at his God, and laughed at his devotions, 

 their slave assumed an air and tone of authority, 

 and sternly rebuked them.^ 



He would sometimes escape from " this Baby- 

 lon," as he calls the hut, and wander in the forest, 

 telling his beads and repeating passages of Scrip- 

 ture. In a remote and lonely spot, he cut the 

 bark in the form of a cross from the trunk of a 

 great tree; and here he made his prayers. This 

 living martyr, half clad in shaggy furs, kneeling 

 on the snow among the icicled rocks and beneath 

 the gloomy pines, bowing in adoration before 



1 Lalemant, Relation, 1647, 41. 



