Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance, thirty-four years old, who had given herself to good works from childhood, though she had not yet joined the cloister, now felt the call to labor in the wilderness. Later, in 1653, came Marguerite Bourgeoys to the little colony beneath the mountain. She too, like Jeanne Mance, distrusted dreams and visions and mystic communings, cherishing a religion of good works rather than introspection of the soul. Dauversière and Olier remained in France. Fortunately for Montreal, practical Christians, fighting soldiers of the cross, carried the heavenly standard to the wilderness.
It was too late to ascend the St. Lawrence when the ship brought the crusaders to Quebec in August, 1641; and difficulties harried them from the outset. Was Montmagny, the Governor, jealous of Maisonneuve; or did he simply realize the fearful dangers Maisonneuve's people would run going beyond the protection of Quebec? At all events, he disapproved this building of a second colony at Montreal, when the first colony at Quebec could barely gain subsistence. He offered them the Island of Orleans in exchange for the Island of Montreal, and warned them of Iroquois raid.
"I have not come to argue," answered Maisonneuve, "but to act. It is my duty to found a colony at Montreal, and thither I go though every tree be an Iroquois."
Maisonneuve passed the winter building boats to ascend the St. Lawrence next spring; and Madame de la Peltrie, having established the Ursulines at Quebec, now cast in her lot with the Montrealers for two years.
May 8, 1642, the little flotilla set out from Quebec—a pinnace with the passengers, a barge with provisions, two long boats propelled by oars and a sweep. Montmagny and Father Vimont accompanied the crusaders; and as the boats came within sight of the wooded mountain on May 17, hymns of praise rose from the pilgrims that must have mingled strangely on Indian ears with the roar of the angry rapids. One can easily call up the scene—the mountain, misty with the gathering shadows of sunset, misty as a veiled bride with the color and bloom of spring; the boats, moored for the night below St. Helen's Island, where the sun, blazing behind the half-foliaged trees, paints a path of fire on the river; the white bark wigwams along shore with the red gleam of camp fire here and there through the forest; the wilderness world bathed in a peace as of heaven, as the vesper hymn floats over the evening air! It is a scene that will never again be enacted in the history of the world—dreamers dreaming greatly, building a castle of dreams, a fortress of holiness in the very center of wilderness barbarity and cruelty unspeakable. The multitudinous voices of traffic shriek where the crusaders' hymn rose that May night. A great city has risen on the foundations which these dreamers laid. Let us not scoff too loudly at their mystic visions and religious rhapsodies! Another generation may scoff at our too-much-worldliness, with our dreamless grind and visionless toil and harder creeds that reject everything which cannot be computed in the terms of traffic's dollar! Well for us if the fruit of our creeds remain to attest as much worth as the deeds of these crusaders!
Early next morning the boats pulled in ashore where Cartier had landed one hundred years before and Champlain had built his factory thirty years ago. Maisonneuve was first to spring on land. He dropped to his knees in prayer. The others as they landed did likewise. Their hymns floated out on the forest. Madame de la Peltrie, Jeanne Mance, and the servant, Charlotte Barré, quickly decorated a wildwood altar with evergreens. Then, with Montmagny the Governor, and Maisonneuve the soldier, standing on either side, Madame de la Peltrie and Jeanne Mance and Charlotte Barré, bowed in reverence, with soldiers and sailors standing at rest unhooded, Father Vimont held the first religious services at Mont Royal. "You are a grain of mustard seed," he said, "and you shall grow till your branches overshadow the earth."
Maisonneuve cut the first tree for the fort; and a hundred legends might be told of the little colony's pioneer trials. Once a flood threatened the existence of the fort. A cross was erected to stay the waters and a vow made if Heaven would save the fort a cross should be carried and placed on the summit of the mountain. The river abated, and Maisonneuve climbed the steep mountain, staggering under the weight of an enormous cross, and planted it at the highest point. Here, in the presence of all, mass was held, and it became a regular pilgrimage from the fort up the mountain to the cross.
In 1743 came Louis d'Ailleboust and his wife, both zealously bound by the same vows as devotees, bringing word of more funds for Ville Marie, as Montreal was called. Montmagny's warning of Iroquois proved all too true. Within a year, in June, 1743, six workmen were beset in the fields, only one escaping. Because his mission was to convert the Indians, Maisonneuve had been ever reluctant to meet the Iroquois in open war, preferring to retreat within the fort when the dog Pilot and her litter barked loud warning that Indians were hiding in the woods. Any one who knows the Indian character will realize how clemency would be mistaken for cowardice. Even Maisonneuve's soldiers began to doubt him.
"My lord, my lord," they urged, "are the enemy never to get a sight of you? Are we never to face the foe?"
Maisonneuve's answer was in March, 1644, when ambushed hostiles were detected stealing on the fort.