They found in Poutrincourt an obstinate man, who would not allow them to manage the purse and sword with the breviary too, so that they were much impeded in the execution of their designs; nor did they agree better with the savages, for they preached against plurality of wives; and their husbands, unwilling to renounce the sin, attacked with all the adroitness of civilized men those who forbade it, and expressed a very unfriendly opinion of such scrupulous teachers. In the meantime the Father Biart proceeded alongthe coast to the Cannibas on the Kennebec, where he exchanged the light and knowledge of his doctrines for provisions for the inhabitants of Port Royal, the place of his residence. The Cannibas received the reverend father with a respect and cordiality strikingly in contrast with the disposition they had a short time before exhibited toward those from England, who intended to form an establishment on their river, but who had not considered it prudent to execute their design.

Father Massé also engaged in a journey to explore the field of his apostolic labors, but was taken dangerously ill on the way. His guide and only companion was the son of Membertou, a distinguished chief, who prayed him to write to the Governor of Acadia to notify him that death would probably overtake him there in the wilderness, so that the Indian might be safe from the suspicion of murder. "That," said the wily Jesuit, "I shall specially avoid, for you, perhaps, will be the man to kill me and use my letter to conceal your crime." The conscience stricken guide acknowledged that the sick man saw his heart and that it repented and drove away the bad thought which had harbored there.

The two missionaries were under the patronage of the Mar chioness de Guercheville, who had taken a cession of the right of De Monts in New France, and became an associate with Poutrincourt. She prevailed on the Queen mother to aid in th fitting out a vessel to be placed under the command of the Sieu de la Saussaye for the purpose of forming another establishmen independent of that at Port Royal. In 1613 the vessel proceeded with two other Jesuits, Quantin and Gilbert du Thet, as coadjutors of Biart and Massé; and, taking these latter persons on the

passage, they disembarked, with twenty-five others, on the northerly bank of the Penobscot. Father Biart made an excursion from this place to visit the neighboring people, and arriving near a village of the Etchemins, he heard frightful cries, like those of lamentation for the dead. He hastened forward with the prompt anxiety which generally impels the ecclesiastics of certain orders to be present at that scene, where pleasure, interest, or duty are generally satisfied by the offering of penitence, bequests, and homage. He ascertained that the occasion of the clamor was the illness of a child, and found the inhabitants of the village ranged in two rows on each side of it; the father holding it in his arms and uttering loud cries, to which the whole assembly responded with one accord. The missionary took the child, and having administered the sacred mystery of baptism, prayed with a loud voice that God would vouchsafe some token of his power. He forgot not, however, to use the means which might contribute, humanly speaking, to the miracle he petitioned for, and presented the child to the warmth and cherishing virtue of the maternal bosom. It soon became well. Whatever else may be said, it must be admitted that the administration of the baptism was judiciously and admirably seasonable; for the Indians were persuaded that its divine efficacy drove away the disease which had so much distressed them; and they looked upon the missionary as one who could call down from the master of life the health of his children.

The auspicious dawn, which promised so bright a day for the harvest of souls to God, was soon overcast, and a storm succeeded, which swept away every vestige of the new establish

*[It had been the purpose of the Jesuits to found a mission on the Penobscot at Kadesquit, (Kenduskeag), now Bangor, just below the well ascertained location of the ancient Norumbega. On their way thither they “disembarked” on Pemetiq, now called from their naming, Mount Desert. Finding here the most interesting circumstances of encouragement from the Indians, and particularly from their sagamore, Asticou, they were led to relinquish the Penobscot, and to form their settlement on an attractive plat of land, gently sloping to the water, and designated by two fountains, still well known. This place is near the mouth of Soames' sound, and is at present a rich and productive farm. (See Biart's Relation, ch. xxiv.)] El.

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ment of St. Sauveur on the Penobscot. A party of AngloVirginians under the command of one Samuel Argal, who had been to Mt. Desert on a fishing voyage, attacked the place, killed Du Thet and some others, compelled La Saussaye to surrender, stole his commission, then charged him with piracy, plundered everything of value, reduced the rest of the property to ashes, and carried away the surviving persons as captives. The robbers then went to Port Royal, under the guidance of Father Biart, as Biencourt affirmed, and committed similar ravages there.

I shall not pursue the chain of incidents which belong to the lives of these Jesuits, but will revert only to a single incident connected with them, which will probably be deemed of some importance.

When the settlements were first made on the coast of this continent, the natives had it in their power to exercise any violence toward them with impunity; and the breath of a hustile chief had been enough to have blown them into the sea. Had the Indians been permitted to have had but one glance into futurity, they would have fought against them until the soil had drank all the blood that flowed in the veins of every white man who stood upon it. It was important, however, in order to gain a foothold, to seize even upon the twigs of the shore. The Jesuits failed not to do so. They courted the chieftain Membertou, who had great influence over the surrounding tribes, and by his conversion first planted christianity on the region of which we are taking the survey. Membertou, as we are assured by Lescarbot, was more than a hundred years of age; yet active and vigorous, he bore the number of his years without bowing beneath them. He was the prophet of his tribe, and performed, with high authority, the functions of the mysterious and revered character of an Autmoin or Powaw.

Being taken dangerously ill, the fathers Biart and Massé caused the removal of this valuable proselyte to Port Royal, and attended upon him with the most sedulous care; but the old man sunk under the malignity of his disease, and they could not

*[The word Penobscot seems to have been used in an extended sense, to denote the region.]

save him either by prayers or medicine. He desired that after his death his body might be removed and buried among the bones of his ancestors, to which the governor consented without hesitation; but the missionaries warmly remonstrated against placing the sacred carcase of a convert in a land profaned by the ashes of pagans, as a scandal to religion and a violence to their rules; and when they were urged to consecrate the place of sepulture, they declared that their benediction could never be bestowed upon it, before the remains of the heathen had ceased to sully it. The dying chieftain, who in his health would have risked all the penalties which the Jesuits denounced against him, in case of his non-compliance with their wishes, finally saved some moments of peace for the close of his life, by telling his importunate instructors that when his spirit should have departed for the other world, they might do as they thought proper with his body; a concession which secured him much solemn mum-, mery at his funeral, and christian ground to rot in.

DREUILLETTES.

The seed which had been sown by Father Biart during his transient visit among the Cannibas, had not fallen upon barren ground. They were so much pleased with the specimen he had furnished them of the excellence of religion, that they sent to the civil governor and religious superior of Canada for a teacher of the faith. It did not escape the sagacity of a Jesuit that the temporal policy of opposing a brave and unconquerable people, as a barrier against English aggression, happily coincided with the purposes of ecclesiastical piety and ambition; and Father Gabriel Dreuillettes was accorded to the request. He was the first evangelical laborer regularly settled in the wilderness of the Kennebec, where he found himself in the year 1646. His/ success was wonderful, for he succeeded in the fabrication of christians out of even the interested priests of the heathen, and ` wrought a marvelous number of conversions, or at least of· baptisms. His catholic majesty was in the habit of exercising a parental liberality in the presents distributed among the Indians ( who at the same time acknowledged fealty to him and submis

sion to the cross; and they seem never to have been less willing to become the recipients of the grace of royal munificence, than of Catholic dogmas. However that might have been, the double recommendation of diligence and success, which the report of the labors of Father Dreuillettes bore, produced the establishment of a regular mission.

He remained a faithful and efficient shepherd of the flock which he had gathered into the gospel fold. In the character of an envoy he twice journeyed to Boston to form, among other objects, an alliance for the protection of the Cannibas and others of the Abenakis against the invasion of their enemies the Iroquois. The Abenakis were, in fact, in 1652, the only nations within the limits of French America, where the Iroquois had not pushed their victories; but the enmity of the latter was a subject of most serious alarm to the former; and the apprehension they suffered not only furnished them a strong inducement to unite with the French, but also undoubtedly aided the missionary in gathering the harvest of his apostolical zeal.

The duties of Father Dreuillettes called him from the Cannibas, but he still sounded the "silver trumpet of the gospel" in remote regions of the North. By his eloquence, and the wonders which he wrought, he extended far and wide, to use the language of catholicism, the glory and the kingdom of God. Charlevoix has preserved a specimen of his miracles, which either proves the influence he had acquired over the imaginations even of the French, or the instrumentality which he had, as an agent of an overruling providence. The historian informs us that a lady, Madame de Connoyer, had fallen into a languor which the physicians could not cure; yet when the missionary did but make the sign of the cross upon his forehead, the disease was instantaneously dispelled. There is no doubt of the fact, as the author who has recorded it, received it from Madame de Lientot.

Aware of the credit of this priest among the Abenakis, the English flattered and caressed him with a view of securing the benefit of his influence. Meanwhile the adroit ecclesiastic received the incense with an accommodating condescension, but went on, at the same time, in the power of his words and works to advance his faith and diffuse that religion which bound his