Midsummer brought the annual swarm of Hurons to the trading fair at Quebec. For a week the all but naked savages overran the little settlement, their animal curiosity almost driving the French to distraction, and their casual peculations causing much annoyance. But their presence was a necessary evil, if the Fur Company was to declare its dividends. Hence long-suffering courtesy became essential both to the peace of the city and to future interests so much at stake.
A powerful consideration with the community was the anxiety of the Jesuits to go back with the Indians to their villages on Lake Huron. Champlain, when governor, had espoused this project in the most seductive of his speeches. "These are our fathers," he had announced to the sixty chiefs gathered for the nonce in the quadrangle of the Fort. "We love them more than we love ourselves. The whole French nation honours them. They do not go among you for your furs. They have left their friends and their country to show you the way to the happy hunting-grounds. If you love the French, as you say you do, then love and honour these our fathers, and care for them in your distant villages."
But the wind bloweth where it listeth, and the Indian mind was no more sure. Above all else it lacked definiteness; it was touched by rhetoric. Champlain's auditors had been thrilled with deep emotion. They were for embarking at once with the Jesuits. Then they had faltered, and by the next day they had decided to depart without them. For another year, therefore, the fathers had remained at Notre Dame des Anges, studying the Huron language for future use, and caring meantime for the spiritual welfare of the half-hundred French residents of Quebec.
The summer of 1634 once more saw the city given over to the visiting Hurons. The old persuasive palaver was repeated, and this time with more success. When the trading fair was over, Brébeuf, Daniel, and Davost set off with the savage fleet, each in a different canoe, facing a journey of nine hundred miles fraught with many perils, but with none so ominous as the sullen and menacing mood of their heathen conductors.
Week after week they pressed toilfully up the St. Lawrence and Ottawa; barefooted they struggled over the rocky portages, with a pittance of pounded maize for their daily ration, and mother-earth for their nightly couch. Davost's guide robbed and abandoned him at an island in the Upper Ottawa. Daniel was likewise deserted; but the giant Brébeuf yielded to no hardships, and surpassed even the seasoned savages in strength and endurance. On the shore of the Georgian Bay, however, his guide at length abandoned him. But Brébeuf had been here in a former year, and his instinctive woodcraft guided him twenty miles through the forest to the palisaded village of Ihonatiria.
"Echom has come again," cried the inhabitants, as they recognised the towering figure of the Jesuit who had departed from them five years before; and they opened again their lodges to the missionary.
MONUMENT TO THE FIRST CANADIAN MISSIONARY
After days of anxious waiting, Brébeuf had the joy of seeing Daniel and Davost arrive at Ihonatiria. The hardships and dangers they had endured, and the indignities they had suffered from their brutal guides, were only outweighed by their zealous delight in reaching at length the scene of their devoted labours. The Hurons aided them in the construction of a log mission-house; and when the fathers had decorated the interior with highly-coloured pictures of the saints and the glittering regalia of the Church, the red men filled it to overflowing. A striking clock and a magnifying glass, however, were the chief objects of wonderment, and the credulous Indians regarded the priests as the workers of miracles. This awe and respect the fathers turned to good account, gathering the children into the mission-house for daily instruction. With a mind also to the physical welfare of their flock, they succeeded in reconstructing the palisades and fort of the Huron village.
Yet with all the outward respect in which the Jesuits were held, their doctrines made little or no impression upon the Indian mind. The adult Hurons had a superstitious fear of baptism, and shunned the sign of the cross as a spell. Under these difficulties the Jesuits laboured, saving stricken children from a dark hereafter by the furtive administration of the dreaded sacrament.