Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/142

 That Jogues this time escaped this awful fate was indeed little short of a miracle. He was marched with his companions in misfortune through three Mohawk villages; he saw Ahasisteri burned to death, and one of his own young Indian converts tomahawked for making the sign of the cross on a baby's forehead; yet, for some reason unexplained, his own life was spared, and having managed to get away from his party, he wandered about in the woods, carving the name of Christ on the bark of the trees, till he came in sight of the Dutch fort at Albany, and was received by its commandant, Van Cuyler, having been the first white man to cross the northern half of the present state of New York.

From Albany, Jogues was unable to return direct to Canada, either by sea or by land, and he therefore took ship for England, whence, after suffering many things at the hands of Falmouth wreckers, he managed to get back to the land of his adoption. Here he found all the French stations in a state of horror-struck excitement, owing to the increasing hostility of the Iroquois. A Father Bressain, who had fallen into one of their ambushes, had seen his Huron comrades killed and eaten, and had himself been rescued only at the last moment by Dutch traders. Other horrors, too terrible to be related, had been inflicted on the native converts to Christianity, and in 1645 a solemn assembly of all the French authorities was held at Three Rivers, with a view to the negotiation of peace with the terrible enemy. After much private consultation among themselves, and many a picturesque palaver with the Indian sachems, who came to the meeting decked out in all their finery, the French were cheered by the conclusion of "eternal peace" with the Five Nations. This peace actually lasted a whole year, and at the end of that year seemed so little likely to be broken, that Jogues, in spite of all his previous sufferings, resolved to venture again to the south of the St. Lawrence, and try to win over some of the Iroquois to Christianity.

In June, 1646, we find the heroic Jesuit embarking on the Iroquois, now the Richelieu, escorted by four warriors of that nation and two young Algonquins, his object being to found a church among the Onondagas. He arrived safely at a little village at the head of a small sheet of water connected with Lake Champlain, called by the natives Andiatarocté, or the Gate of the Lake, to which he gave the name of St. Sacrement. After a short cruise on the "Gate," and the presentation of gifts to the Iroquois chiefs and elders who happened to be assembled on its banks, Jogues returned to the St. Lawrence to report progress, and in September of the same