But fearless of this danger the fleet swept out of Dieppe on the 4th of May, 1639, and the convent life, with almost daily Masses, made the flagship vie in its regularity with the time-honored monasteries of the Old World.
But if the danger of hostile cruisers did not alarm them, the feast of the Holy Trinity came with a new peril. Dense fogs hung over the bosom of the ocean while the Masses were offered. Just as they had risen from their adoration, a sailor on the deck shrieked: “Mercy! mercy! we are all lost!” Through the lifting vapors he caught, within two fathoms of the ship’s side, the flash and the glitter of ice. While all sank in prayer, offering vows and Masses, and the Ursuline Sister St. Joseph began to chant the Litany of Loretto, the vanishing mist showed them the fearful extent of their danger. The iceberg towered high above their topmast, its summit still wreathed in a cloud of mist, while far and wide it extended over the sea. “You would have called it a city,” says Mother Mary of the Incarnation, “and there are cities which are far less extensive than this berg,” with turrets and spires, streets and dwellings, as it were of crystal.
The sails were straining, the wind being full in their favor, and the iceberg advancing. All passed in a moment. Captain Bontems’ voice rang out, but providentially the man at the wheel, appalled by terror, gave a wrong movement, the wind suddenly changed, and the vessel was saved, as the ice fairly grazed it, and bore away from the magnificent object that so recently sent a thrill through every heart—even the best pilots averring that it was a miracle, as no human skill could have saved them.
Still storms and fogs delayed the ships, and it was not till the 15th of July that they entered the port of Tadoussac on the lower St. Lawrence. Transferred to a fishing-smack, the whole party were here detained several days, but at last on the 1st of August reached the lower town of Quebec.
The gallant Knight of Malta, Huault de Montmagny, Governor-General of Canada, received them at the wharf, and the city made it a general holiday. As the nuns stepped on the American soil which was to be the scene of their labors for God and the Indians, they knelt to kiss the earth. All then proceeded to the church, where a Te Deum was chanted.
Father Chaumonot was not to linger long at Quebec. A letter of August 7th announces that he with three other fathers was about to start for the Huron country. His stormy sea voyage of three months was followed by a month’s journey over the rivers and lakes and through the vast forests of the New World. On the 10th of September, the six Hurons ran their bark canoe ashore at the end of Lake Tsirorgi, where Father Jerome Lalemant was at the moment in a rude cabin he had recently thrown up.
Chaumonot was on the field of his labor. Strange indeed was all around him. “Our dwellings are of bark, like those of the Indians, with no partitions except for the chapel. For want of table and furniture, we eat on the ground and drink out of bark. Our kitchen and refectory furniture consists of a great wooden dish full of sagamity, which I can compare to nothing but the paste used for wall paper. Our bed is bark with a thin blanket; sheets we have none, even in sickness; but the greatest inconvenience is the smoke, which, for want of a chimney, fills the whole cabin.”
“Our manner of announcing the Word of God to the Indians is not to go up into a pulpit and preach in a public place; we must visit each house separately, and by the fire explain the mysteries of our holy faith to those who choose to listen to it.”
The superior soon recognized in the young father—to whom the Hurons gave the name of Oronhiaguehee (the Bearer of Heaven)—a great facility for languages, as well as zeal, courage, and perseverance.
Father Chaumonot began his Huron labors at a critical moment. The mission among the Wyandot tribes, renewed by the great apostle Brébeuf soon after the restoration of Canada to France, had been fruitful in crosses and gave little to encourage the ministers of religion.