1641-45.] DISTRESS OF THE COLONY. 241 



a volley of bullets, a rush of screeching savages, 

 and all was over. The soldiers hastened to the 

 spot to find silence, solitude, and a mangled 

 corpse. 



" T had as lief," writes Father Vimont, "be beset 

 by goblins as by the Iroquois. The one are about 

 as mvisible as the other. Our people on the 

 Eichelieu and at Montreal are kept in a closer 

 confinement than ever were monks or nuns in our 

 smallest convents in France." 



The Confederates at this time were in a flush 

 of unparalleled audacit}'. They despised white 

 men as base poltroons, and esteemed themselves 

 warriors and heroes, destmed to conquer all man- 

 kind.^ The fire-arms with which the Dutch had 

 rashly supplied them, joined to their united coun- 

 cils, theh courage, and ferocity, gave them an 

 advantao^e over the surroundins^ tribes which thev 

 fully understood. Theu* passions rose with their 

 sense of power. They boasted that they would 

 wipe the Hurons, the Algonquins, and the French 

 from the face of the earth, and cany the " white 

 girls," meaning the nuns, to their villages. This 

 last event, indeed, seemed more than probable ; 

 and the Hospital nuns left then* exposed station at 

 Sillery, and withdrew to the ramparts and palisades; 

 of Quebec. The St. Lawrence and the Ottawa 

 were so infested, that communication with the 



1 Bressani, -when a prisoner among them, writes to tliis effect in a 

 letter to his Superior. — See Relation Ahr^j^e, 131. 



Tlie anonymous author of the Relation of 1660 says, that, in their 

 belief, if their nation were destroyed, a general confusion and overthrow 

 of mankind must needs be the consequence. — Relation, 1660, 6. 



21 



