1648.] ITS INMATES. 363 



were, no doubt, of wood ; and they included a 

 church, a kitchen, a refectory, places of retreat for 

 religious instruction and meditation,^ and lodgings 

 for at least sixty persons. Near the church, but 

 outside the fortification, was a cemetery. Beyond 

 the ditch or canal which opened on the river was 

 a large area, still traceable, in the form of an ir- 

 regular triangle, surrounded by a ditch, and appar- 

 ently by palisades. It seems to have been meant 

 for the protection of the Indian visitors who came 

 in throngs to Sainte Marie, and who were lodged in 

 a large house of bark, after the Huron manner.^ 

 Here, perhaps, was also the hospital, which was 

 placed without the walls, in order that Indian 

 women, as well as men, might be admitted into it.^ 

 No doubt the buildings of Sainte Marie were of 

 the roughest, — rude walls of boards, windows 

 without glass, vast chimneys of unhewn stone. 

 All its riches were centred in the church, which, 

 as Lalemant tells us, was regarded by the Indians 

 as one of the wonders of the world, but which, he 

 adds, would have made but a beggarly show in 

 France. Yet one wonders, at first thought, how 

 so much labor could have been accomplished here. 



1 It seems that these places, besides those for the priests, were of two 

 kinds, — " vne retraite pour les pelerins {Indians), enfin vn heu plus sepa- 

 re, ou les infideles, qui n'y sont adniis que de iour au passage, y puissent 

 tousiours receuoir quelque bon mot pour leur salut." — Lalemant, Rela- 

 tion des Hurons, 1644, 74. 



'•^ At least it was so in 1642. " Nous leur auons dresse vn Hospice ou 

 Cabane d'ecorce." — Ibid., 1642, 57. 



3 " Get hospital est tellement separe de nostre demeure, que non 

 seulement les hommes et enfans, mais les femmes y peuuent estre ad- 

 niises." — /6iJ., 1644, 74. 



