396 THE SANCTUARY. [1649. 



them they were helpless, but with them they could 

 hold their ground and repel the attacks of the Iro- 

 quois. They urged their plea in language which 

 Kagueneau describes as pathetic and eloquent; and, 

 to confirm their words, they gave him ten large 

 collars of wampum, saying that these were the 

 voices of their wives and children. They gained 

 their point. The Jesuits abandoned their former 

 plan, and promised to join the Hurons on Isle 

 St. Joseph. 



They had built a boat, or small vessel, and in 

 this they embarked such of their stores as it would 

 hold. The greater part were placed on a large 

 raft made for the purpose, like one of the rafts 

 of timber which every summer float down the St. 

 Lawrence and the Ottawa. Here was their stock 

 of corn, — in part the produce of their own fields, 

 and in part bought from the Hurons in former years 

 of plenty, — pictures, vestments, sacred vessels and 

 images, weapons, ammunition, tools, goods for 

 barter with the Indians, cattle, swine, and poultry.^ 

 Sainte Marie was stripped of everything that could 

 be moved. Then, lest it should harbor the Iro- 

 quois, they set it on f[ie, and saw consumed in an 

 hour the results of nine or ten years of toil. It 

 was near sunset, on the fourteenth of June.^ The 



1 Some of these were killed for food after reaching the island. In 

 March following, tliey had ten fowls, a pair of swine, two bulls and two 

 cows, kept for breeding. — LeW-e de Ragueneau au General de la Compagnie 

 de Jesus, St. Joseph, 13 Mars, 1650. 



2 Eagueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1650, 3. In the Relation of the 

 preceding year he gives the fifteenth of May as the date, — evidently an 

 error. 



"Nous sortismes de ces terres de Promission qui estoient nostre 



