418 THE HURON MISSION ABANDONED. [1650. 



screeched the war-whoop, and struck like hghtning 

 with their hatchets among the sleepers. Seven 

 were killed before the rest could spring to their 

 weapons. Bressani leaped up, and received on the 

 instant three arrow-wounds in the head. The Iro- 

 quois were surrounded, and a desperate fight en- 

 sued in the dark. Six of them were killed on the 

 spot, and two made prisoners ; while the remaining 

 two, breaking through the crowd, bounded out of 

 the camp and escaped in the forest. 



The united parties soon after reached Montreal ; 

 but the Hurons refused to remain in a spot so ex- 

 posed to the Iroquois. Accordingly, they all de- 

 scended the St. Lawrence, and at length, on the 

 twenty-eighth of July, reached Quebec. Here the 

 Ursulines, the hospital nuns, and the inhabitants 

 taxed their resources to the utmost to provide food 

 and shelter for the exiled Hurons. Their good- 

 will exceeded their power ; for food was scarce at 

 Quebec, and the Jesuits themselves had to bear the 

 chief burden of keeping the sufferers alive. ^ 



But, if famine was an evil, the Iroquois were a 

 far greater one ; for, while the western nations of 

 their confederacy were engrossed with tjie destruc- 

 tion of the Hurons, the Mohawks kept up incessant 

 attacks on the Algonquins and the French. A 

 party of Christian Indians, chiefly from Sillery, 

 planned a stroke of retaliation, and set out for the 

 Mohawk country, marching cautiously and sending 

 forward scouts to scour the forest. One of these, a 

 Huron, suddenly fell in with a large Iroquois war- 



1 Compare Juchereau, Histoire de I* Hotel-Dieu, 79, 80. 



