* See the correspondence in N. Y. Col. Docs. III. 118-156.
Compare Hutchinson Collection, 407, and Mass. Hist. Coll.
XVIII. 102.
The return of Tracy was less fortunate than his advance. The rivers, swollen by autumn rains, were difficult to pass; and in crossing Lake Champlain two canoes were overset in a storm, and eight men were drowned. From St. Anne, a new fort built early in the summer on Isle La Motte, near the northern end of the lake, he sent news of his success to Quebec, where there was great rejoicing and a solemn thanksgiving. Signs and prodigies had not been wanting to attest the interest of the upper and nether powers in the crusade against the myrmidons of hell. At one of the forts on the Richelieu, “the soldiers,” says Mother Mary, “were near dying of fright. They saw a great fiery cavern in the sky, and from this cavern came plaintive voices mixed with frightful howlings. Perhaps it was the demons, enraged because we had depopulated a country where they had been masters so long, and had said mass and sung the praises of God in a place where there had never before been any thing but foulness and abomination.”
Tracy had at first meant to abandon Fort St. Anne; but he changed his mind after returning to Quebec. Meanwhile the season had grown so late that there was no time to send proper supplies to the garrison. Winter closed, and the place was not only ill provisioned, but was left without a priest. Tracy wrote to the superior of the Sulpitians at Montreal to send one without delay; but the request was more easily made than fulfilled, for he forgot to order an escort, and the way was long and dangerous. The stout-hearted Dollier de Casson was told, however, to hold himself ready to go at the first opportunity. His recent campaigning had left him in no condition for braving fresh hardships, for he was nearly disabled by a swelling on one of his knees. By way of cure he resolved to try a severe bleeding, and the Sangrado of Montreal did his work so thoroughly that his patient fainted under his hands. As he returned to consciousness, he became aware that two soldiers had entered the room. They told him that they were going in the morning to Chambly, which was on the way to St. Anne; and they invited him to go with them. “Wait till the day after to-morrow,” replied the priest, “and I will try.” The delay was obtained; and, on the day fixed, the party set out by the forest path to Chambly, a distance of about four leagues. When they reached it, Dollier de Casson was nearly spent, but he concealed his plight from the commanding officer, and begged an escort to St. Anne, some twenty leagues farther. As the officer would not give him one, he threatened to go alone, on which ten men and an ensign were at last ordered to conduct him. Thus attended, he resumed his journey after a day’s rest. One of the soldiers fell through the ice, and none of his comrades dared help him. Dollier de Casson, making the sign of the cross, went to his aid, and, more successful than on the former occasion, caught him and pulled him out. The snow was deep; and the priest, having arrived in the preceding summer, had never before worn snow-shoes, while a sack of clothing, and his portable chapel which he carried at his back, joined to the pain of his knee and the effects of his late bleeding, made the march a purgatory.
He was sorely needed at Fort St. Anne. There was pestilence in the garrison. Two men had just died without absolution, while more were at the point of death, and praying for a priest. Thus it happened that when the sentinel descried far off, on the ice of Lake Champlain, a squad of soldiers approaching, and among them a black cassock, every officer and man not sick, or on duty, came out with one accord to meet the new-comer. They overwhelmed him with welcome and with thanks. One took his sack, another his portable chapel, and they led him in triumph to the fort. First he made a short prayer, then went his rounds among the sick, and then came to refresh himself with the officers. Here was La Motte de la Lucière, the commandant; La Durantaye, a name destined to be famous in Canadian annals; and a number of young subalterns. The scene was no strange one to Dollier de Casson, for he had been an officer of cavalry in his time, and fought under Turenne; * a good soldier, without doubt, at the mess table or in the field, and none the worse a priest that he had once followed the wars. He was of a lively humor, given to jests and mirth; as pleasant a father as ever said Benedicite. The soldier and
* Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson,
extracts from copy in possession of the late Jacques Viger.
the gentleman still lived under the cassock of the priest. He was greatly respected and beloved; and his influence as a peace-maker, which he often had occasion to exercise, is said to have been remarkable. When the time demanded it, he could use arguments more cogent than those of moral suasion. Once, in a camp of Algonquins, when, as he was kneeling in prayer, an insolent savage came to interrupt him, the father, without rising, knocked the intruder flat by a blow of his fist, and the other Indians, far from being displeased, were filled with admiration at the exploit. *
His cheery temper now stood him in good stead; for there was dreary work before him, and he was not the man to flinch from it. The garrison of St. Anne had nothing to live on but salt pork and half-spoiled flour. Their hogshead of vinegar had sprung a leak, and the contents had all oozed out. They had rejoiced in the supposed possession of a reasonable stock of brandy; but they soon discovered that the sailors, on the voyage from France, had emptied the casks and filled them again with salt-water. The scurvy broke out with fury. In a short time, forty out of the sixty men became victims of the loathsome malady. Day or night, Doilier de Casson and Forestier, the equally devoted young surgeon, had no rest. The surgeon’s strength failed, and the priest was himself slightly attacked with the disease. Eleven men
* Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson, cited
by Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 395, 396
died; and others languished for want of help, for their comrades shrank from entering the infected dens where they lay. In their extremity some of them devised an ingenious expedient. Though they had nothing to bequeath, they made wills in which they left imaginary sums of money to those who had befriended them, and thenceforth they found no lack of nursing.
In the intervals of his labors, Dollier de Casson would run to and fro for warmth and exercise on a certain track of beaten snow, between two of the bastions, reciting his breviary as he went, so that those who saw him might have thought him out of his wits. One day La Motte called out to him as he was thus engaged, “Eh, Monsieur le curé, if the Iroquois should come, you must defend that bastion. My men are all deserting me, and going over to you and the doctor.” To which the father replied, “Get me some litters with wheels, and I will bring them out to man my bastion. They are brave enough now; no fear of their running away.” With banter like this, they sought to beguile their miseries; and thus the winter wore on at Fort St. Anne. *