THE INSTINCT OP IMMORTALITY. 295 



racter and influence among his people, and evidently 

 of great personal qualities. He became an early 

 convert of the missionaries, and when attacked with 

 his last illness was carried to Port Royal for medical 

 assistance ; but finding this of no avail, and his end 

 approaching, he asked the Governor, Beincourt, to 

 promise that his body should be taken to his native 

 village and buried with those of his ancestors. The 

 promise was given, but no sooner was it known to the 

 Jesuit missionaries, than they were filled with horror ; 

 their noble convert could not be buried with infidels,- 

 his bones must lie in consecrated ground. Beincourt 

 suggested that they might consecrate his grave in the 

 Micmac burial-place, but this was out of the question,, 

 unless all the old infidels in the cemetery could first 

 be disinterred and removed. The quarrel threatened- 

 to be serious, and the angry monks withdrew, and de- 

 clared that if Mambertou persisted in his unreasonable 

 wish, they would have nothing to do with his death or 

 burial, and would withhold the rites of the Church. 

 No modern Ultramontanes could display more faithful 

 ritualism or more genuine antagonism to all that is 

 holy and spiritual in religion and in man; and the 

 Jesuit narrative records with satisfaction that their 

 firmness triumphed; for the dying chief, unable to 

 struggle against their fanaticism, quietly gave way, 

 and his bones lie in the old French cemetery of 

 Port Eoyal. 



America, we have seen, is rich in examples of the 

 belief in a future state. We may now turn for a little 



