have many deprivations so far from their rich country. Draw your own inference, then. If these men are wise, as you believe, they must have some motive for so great a change of their abode; they must have set for themselves some design. You love dearly your own country, parents, and friends, and we ourselves are neither marble nor stone. We also love ours, and perhaps with more reason than you, who cannot expect of them such great and good services. Still, we have willingly left all; we have said adieu to happy Europe; we have trusted ourselves to a cruel and perfidious element instead of fearing it. For every one dreads those rafts by which we cross the seas. A spark in the powder makes it fly into destruction; the winds rend the sails to tatters; the waters threaten to engulf them; the shoals of sand and the hidden reefs wreck them. In fine, to reach your shores — that is, your dismal deserts — at the risk of meeting the burning piles of your enraged enemies, we have braved a thousand tempests, a thousand shipwrecks, a thousand accidents, without fear even of the pirates who day and night sweep the wide seas. Can we do all this without motives inducing us?
“Some of us among you have been subjected to the torments of the Iroquois, and have been obliged to return to Europe for the cure of mutilations. Still, after such fearful sufferings, our parents and friends have not been able to prevail upon us to remain with them even for a few months, as we regard it a solemn duty to return to these forests. Should we consent to this without grave and pressing reasons?
“Nor are you ignorant that we have never sought to gain what you value most, or to secure any of your goods. On the contrary, in spite of our poverty we make you every day rich presents. Then it is not our interest which moves us, but your welfare. The end we have in view is one of the highest importance. It is your souls, and not these woods, nor these rude cabins, that have drawn us here. Being of such value in the eyes of God, can we esteem them too highly?”
“ ‘Such is the example which has proved the most effective means, in the hand of the Lord, to plant the faith and the standard of the Cross in this wilderness.’ ”
His wounds having been dressed, Bressani returned to
Canada in season to be present at Three Rivers at the
