Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/450

430 speedily offered, at which he felt his way among the vessels of the altar and recited the office by memory. Just as he was raising the Host his sight returned, and never failed him again, through a long-protracted service in various places, till his death at Quebec in 1681, at the age of eighty-eight. He was sent twice by the Governor of Canada on diplomatic missions to New England, — alone in 1650, and with Godefroy, of the Canadian Council, the next year. This diplomatic character was his full protection, and, in Massachusetts at least, his salvation from imprisonment and banishment; and from death, should he break confinement or return again. Such was the reception Massachusetts then gave by her law, copying that of England, to “Papistical and Jesuitical” intruders, unless they might be shipwrecked on the coast. Respect, hospitality, and kindness — for which the Father expresses his warm recognition and gratitude in his own journal (fortunately in our hands) — was the far preferable treatment extended to him. He says he was called the “Patriarch” on the Kennebec and the coast of Acadia. Leaving Quebec Sept. 1, 1650, he went to Norridgewock, where he met John Winslow, the agent of the Plymouth colony at that post, and brother of Edward, who had procured from Parliament, July 27, 1649, the charter of the Corporation for Propagating the Gospel here, in aid of Eliot's work.

It would seem that Druillettes and Winslow must have had even a jolly time together in the warmth of good fellowship and cheer, for the Jesuit expresses himself as heartily upon it as became his cloth. Leaving Augusta by land for Merry Meeting Bay, and sailing thence November 25, they reached Cape Ann December 5, and, partly by land and boat, came on shore at Boston December 8. We may be sure that Winslow took care that the Jesuit should at once be known as an ambassador. The latter playfully calls Winslow his “Pereira,” — in allusion to the Portuguese merchant who had shown like care and love, as a