260 DE NOUE. [1646. 



with Baron, a French soldier, resumed the search ; 

 and, guided by the slight depressions in the snow 

 which had fallen on the wanderer's footprints, the 

 quick-eyed savages traced him through all his 

 windings, found his camp by the shore of the 

 island, and thence followed him beyond the fort. 

 He had passed near without discovering it, — per- 

 haps weakness had dimmed his sight, — stopped to 

 rest at a point a league above, and thence made his 

 way about three leagues farther. Here they found 

 him. He had dug a circular excavation in the 

 snow, and was kneeling in it on the earth. His 

 head was bare, his eyes open and turned upwards, 

 and his hands clasped on his breast. His hat and 

 his snow-shoes lay at his side. The body was 

 leaning slightly forward, resting against the bank 

 of snow before it, and frozen to the hardness of 

 marble. 



Thus, in an act of kindness and charity, died the 

 first martyr of the Canadian mission.^ 



1 Lalemant, Relation, 1646, 9 ; Marie de I'lncarnation, Lettre, 10 Sq)t., 

 1646 ; Bressani, Relation Ahr€g€e, 175. 



One of the Indians who found the body of De Noue was killed by the 

 Iroquois at Ossossand, in the Huron country, three years after. He 

 received the death-blow in a posture like that in which he had seen the 

 dead missionary. His body was found with the hands still clasped on 

 the breast. — Lettre de Chaumonot a Lalemant, 1 Juin, 1649. 



The next death among the Jesuits was that of Masse, who died at 

 Sillery, on the twelfth of May of this year, 1646, at the age of seventy- 

 two. He had come with Biard to Acadia as early as 1611. (See "Pio- 

 neers of France," 262.) Lalemant, in tlie Relation of 1646, gives an 

 account of him, and speaks of penances which he imposed on himself, 

 some of which are to the last degree disgusting. 



