1614.1 BRESSANI'S JOURNEY. 251 



While the Indian allies of the French were wast- 

 ing away beneath this atrocious warfare, the French 

 themselves, and especially the traveling Jesuits, 

 had their full share of the infliction. In truth, the 

 puny and sickly colony seemed in the gasps of 

 dissolution. The beginning of spring, particularly, 

 was a season of terror and suspense ; for with the 

 breaking up of the ice, sure as a destiny, came the 

 Iroquois. As soon as a canoe could float, they 

 were on the war-path ; and with the cry of the re- 

 turning wild-fowl mingled the yell of these human 

 tigers. They did not always w^ait for the breaking 

 ice, but set forth on foot, and, when they came to 

 open water, made canoes and embarked. 



Well might Father Vimont call the Iroquois 

 " the scourge of this infant church." They burned, 

 hacked, and devoured the neophytes ; exterminated 

 whole villages at once ; destroyed the nations whom 

 the Fathers hoped to convert; and ruined that 

 sure ally of the missions, the fur-trade. Not the 

 most hideous nightmare of a fevered brain could 

 transcend in horror the real and waking perils 

 with which they beset the path of these intrepid 

 priests. 



In the spring of 1644, Joseph Bressani, an Ital- 

 ian Jesuit, born in Rome, and now for two years 

 past a missionary in Canada, was ordered by his 

 Superior to go up to the Hurons. It was so early 

 in the season that there seemed hope that he might 

 pass in safety ; and as the Fathers in that "svild 

 mission had received no succor for three }ears, 

 Bressani was charged with letters to them, and such 



