Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/279

Rh Such great adversities might be supposed sufficient to quench the ardour of the missionaries. Not at all! They pressed forward anew.

Whilst the savage nations were carrying on cruel wars one with another, and converting all the paths through the forest of the West into paths of death, the Bishop of Quebec, Francis de Laval, was animated by the desire of conveying the doctrines of peace to the shores of the great river. He desired to go himself; but the lot fell on René Mesnard. Every personal consideration seemed to retain him at Quebec, but powerful instincts urged him to risk his life in the enterprise. He was already old when he entered on the path still red with the blood of his predecessors. “In three or four months,” wrote he to a friend, on his journey, “and you may add my name to those of the dead.”

He went, never again to return. Afar off in the wilderness of the West, whilst his attendant was one day occupied in the transport of a boat, he entered a forest and was never more seen:—his cassock and breviary were long retained as amulets among the Sioux! Another missionary was killed by the arrows of the Indians during a fight between two hostile tribes.

It is a refreshment to turn from these bloody and cruel scenes, which marked the first introduction of Christianity by Europe into the West, to the idyllian and peaceful episode of the Jesuit missionary, Marquette, and his labours amid those savage, warlike Indian tribes; it is like a sunbeam between thunder-clouds.

Already had the indefatigable Father Aloüez visited most of the Indian tribes round Lake Superior, and during two residences among them had taught the Chippewas to chant the Paternoster and Ave Maria, had been invited by the Pottawatomies, the worshippers of the sun, to their huts; had smoked the pipe of peace with the Illinois tribes, who told him of their great fields overgrown with