First French Foot- Prints Beyond the Lakes. 101 



to tell YOU how tired I was with paddling all day among the In- 

 dians, wading the rapids a hundred times and more, through mud 

 and over sharp stones that cut my feet, carrying the canoe and 

 luggage through the woods to avoid cataracts, and half starved 

 the while, for we had nothing to eat but porridge, of water and 

 pounded maize, of which they gave me a very small allowance." 

 Through the winter of 1615 in a hermitage a thousand miles west 

 of Quebec which was itself an ultima Thule, — this friar wa:s mak- 

 ing catechisms or struggling with the difficulties of the Huron 

 tongue, or expounding the faith in broken Indian, and by way of 

 object lesson showing " four great likenesses of the Madonna sus- 

 pended on a cord." 



As early as 1614, when the French first ascended the Ottawa, 

 they planted crosses of white cedar on its shores and islands. In 

 1625 the Jesuit Brebeuf began a three years' sojourn on Huron 

 waters. Onward from 1634 a, permanent mission was maintained 

 there for fifteen years until the Hurons were scattered to the four 

 winds. Missionaries followed them in their dispersion. In sum- 

 mer plying the paddle all day or toiling through pathless thickets, 

 bending under a canoe or portable chapel heavy as a peddler's 

 pack, veritable colporters, while famine, snow storms, cold, treach- 

 eroiis ice of the lake, smoke and filth were the luxuries of their 

 winter wanderings. We underrate the arduousness of mission 

 journeys until we consider how greatly storms, cold and famine 

 retarded them. Allouer's voyage from Mackinaw to Green Bay 

 consumed thirty-one days. Marquette was ten days more on bis 

 passage from Green Bay to Chicago. 



Yet, in 1642, Madame de la Peltrie, — a tender and delicate 

 woman, — reared in Parisian refinements, was seized at Quebec 

 with a longing to visit the Hurons, and to preach in person at that 

 most arduous station. In 1641, the year before one house was 

 built in Montreal, Fathers Jogues and Raymbault were distribut- 

 ing rosaries at the mouth of Lake Superior. Previous to 1640 

 they had become acquainted with Wisconsin Winnebagoes. The 

 earliest Iroquois baptism was in 1669, but thirty years before, 

 scores of Hurons had been baptized hundreds of leagues further 

 west. 



