CHAPTEE XXXIV. 



THE END. 



Failure op the Jesuits. — What their Success would have 

 INVOLVED. — Future of the Mission. 



With the fall of the Hurons, fell the best hope 

 of the Canadian mission. They, and the stable 

 and populous communities around them, had been 

 the rude material from which the Jesuit would 

 have formed his Christian empire in the wilder- 

 ness ; but, one by one, these kindred peoples were 

 uprooted and swept away, while the neighbor- 

 ing Algonquins, to whom they had been a bul- 

 wark, were involved with them in a common ruin. 

 The land of promise was turned to a solitude and a 

 desolation. There was still work in hand, it is true, 

 — vast regions to explore, and countless heathens 

 to snatch from perdition ; but these, for the most 

 part, were remote and scattered hordes, from whose 

 conversion it was vain to look for the same solid 

 and decisive results. 



In a measure, the occupation of the Jesuits was 

 gone. Some of them went home, " well resolved," 



[446] 



