Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/413

Rh So we follow these heroic pioneers of the Cross deep and far into their mission stations of the wilderness, which they were the first of white men to penetrate. They would go alone if so it were best; they asked no companionship for their own safety or cheer. To one obligation which kept them in converse with the world they had parted with they were ever considerately faithful. Once in a year at least, if by any possibility it could be effected, it was their duty to send from their lonely posts a report of the work of their missions. Many a birchen skiff, paddled by an Indian through the calm or fretted waters of our lakes and rivers, has for centuries borne to Quebec or Montreal these Jesuit “Relations” for transmission across the water to the Superiors of the Order. Blindly did the Indian courier marvel over the mystery of the packet with which he was intrusted, and which he was bid to guard as the choicest portion of his trading freight. Written often on birch bark, with charcoal and grease, or with the juice of some wild sap or berry, these Relations told many a story of dire extremity, of dauntless courage, and occasionally of exultant joy over some gleaming success. Truthful, candid, and full of a sweet and gentle placidity of spirit are those wilderness missives. One, two, three, even more years did the solitary apostle pursue his strange toil among fickle and capricious disciples without the sight of a white man. To soothe and soften their savage breasts, to save their doomed souls from a fate worse than the torturings which they inflicted on their victims, and to impart just so much of the teaching of the most elementary instruction in the faith as would justify the giving of Christian baptism, — this was his task. An Indian infant just passing out of life needed only the water-drop, moistening the sign of the cross, to rescue his soul for bliss. When the jealous savages, visited with contagious diseases or plagues, turned fiercely on the priest who was so eager to perform the rite, and charged him with sorcery or magic wrought for their