beyond Three Rivers. All that we can transport farther are some church ornaments, wine for the Mass (of which we use only four or five drops in the cup), and some vestments, with a few prunes and raisins for the sick, everything being at great risk on the way. We have lost this year two of our packages. Our platters, though of wood, cost more than do yours, their worth being that of a beaver skin, — that is, a hundred francs.
“The kingdom of God makes a grand advance in these countries. We have here a foreign nation of refugees, in part from their enemies the Iroquois, as also because of a pestilence which had been very fatal among them. Nearly all of them are baptized before they die. I have baptized some of them, and the Fathers have no small task, morning and evening, in visiting and instructing the poor sick ones who seem to have escaped a cruel death from their enemies only to meet the happy end of the elect. I leave you to judge if it be not a great consolation to those who give their prayers and their toils to the conversion of these poor souls, that God is willing to save them if we, on our part, offer no hindrance to it. I ask and implore for this end the assistance of the prayers of your Reverence and of my acquaintance. I salute them all with a heart of affection; I believe they will not fail me.
“Here, now, is a little journal since my arrival. Having fortunately reached the land of the Hurons after a journey of twenty-six days in a canoe, or rather a bark cradle of a birch tree, on September 29, at one o'clock in the morning, and being put in the way of reaching one of our residences in season to celebrate the Mass on that day, the rain and the exhaustion caused by the preceding journey, in which we were on the water from one 'o'clock in the morning till after midnight, without a chance to rest, and induced, by the hope of being able to say Mass, to eat nothing after my landing, the rain and the fatigue, and also the distance of the place, — five or six leagues, — and ignorance of the paths, constrained me to stop at the first village and to take some little nourishment. I then entered the cabin of a chief of the settlement; they passed me the compliment of a chay (welcome) in their language, the ordinary salute as ‘good day,’ and immediately spread a mat on the earth for me to lie upon, and then took four ears of corn which they roasted and presented to me, as also two pumpkins roasted in the ashes, and a platter of sagamy. I assure your Reverence that this was delicious food to me. The little children and others gath-
