Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/415

Rh hardships in common; always on the route content with their foul, smoky, and vermin-infested lodgings; sleeping on boughs or skins, or on the bare earth, with pestiferous odors, and children and dogs crawling over him. He never attempted to carry with him the luxuries of life, leaving them all behind him. We read of one of them who had contrived, through all the perils of canoe navigation and of trampings by the portages round the cataracts, to transport into the far wilderness a clock. The wondering savages would come into his cabin to hear it strike the hours, apparently at the command of the missionary. Indispensable to him as his own luggage, however, were the materials and paraphernalia of altar furniture for the daily celebration of the mass and for festival occasions: his own robes, a little wine and wheat for the sacrament, rosaries, crucifixes, bells, and pictures, — if possible, a robed and painted image of the Virgin Mary or a saint, and writing materials. For a year at least he could expect no replenishing. His severest deprivation was when he could not obtain a few grains of wheat or a drop or two of the juice of the grape for the sacrament. One of the Fathers, after leaving Quebec with a few Indians for the Huron wilderness, was sadly discomfited when an Indian, on the first night's encampment on the Isle of Orleans, became crazily drunk, having purloined and consumed the contents of a little keg of wine, the year's supply of the missionary.

As soon as possible, on taking up residence in an Indian village, the missionary would construct a simple log or bark chapel, rough and rustic, surmounted with a cross. A large central cross would also be planted in or near the settlement. Either in connection with or beside the chapel he would provide a rude cabin for himself, with two apartments, — one of which he reserved for strict privacy, the other accessible for a wonderful variety of business with the Indians. The daily altar offices, which indeed were seldom omitted even on the wilderness tramp, were at once