participation of many of the Jesuit missionaries in the cruel attempts of the French to ruin the English settlements in New England.

That careful and conscientious historian, Hutchinson, who was a contemporary of the men who bore. the brunt of the conflict, carefully gathered their testimony and recorded it with painstaking fidelity; but his account seems of late to have been lost sight of. The French archives were also open to me, and here I found ample evidence, inaccessible to our early writers, to sustain Hutchinson; in fact, there was no documentary evidence in existence to support any other view of the subject.

How, then, did this strange change of sentiment come about? Evidently through a depicting of the affair at Norridgewock in a style entirely different from the plain and truthful sketch of Hutchinson, which, somewhat later than his sketch, was placed before the public; a masterly piece of delineation, tinged with a pathos which easily enlisted the sympathy of any one, who did not take the trouble to scan it closely.

This bit of attractive workmanship bears the name of the Rev. P. F. X. De Charlevoix, S. J., who is mentioned by Governor Shute as "one Charlevoix, who comes from the Court of France in the quality

of an inspector, to make memoirs on Acady and Missisipe and the other countries thereabouts."

He

This is an exact and truthful statement of the function of Charlevoix, and he fulfilled it well. gathered together everything that he could collect relating to events which had occurred in New France preceding his arrival; journals, letters, and verbal recitals, and transcribed them often in the precise words in which they came to him, leaving out an occasional mot, which might not perhaps be pleasant to those of his school, or heightening the color of one which might be made to serve its interests better.

He never seems to have thought of exercising the critical faculty in arranging his material; to sift evidence, to analyze and compare statements, nor, in fact, to do anything but to gather and arrange chronologically what he could collect. He was "an Inspector to make Memoirs," and he did his work and saved a good deal of valuable material for the use of those coming after him.

He was not then the real author of the story Rale's death. As it is easy to trace most of his stories to their sources, so this, hardly changed, is found embodied in a letter of the Rev. Peter de la Chasse, S. J., the superior of his order in New France, printed in a collection of letters entitled: "Lettres Edifiantes et

Curieuses, ecrites des Missions Étrangères, par quelques Missionaires de la Compaignie de Jesus," in 1726, shortly after the death of Ralé.

But it may be pertinent to ask, how did the author of this letter obtain his account of the transaction? The English, with whom he had no communication, were the only civilized men present on the occasion, and their account differs radically from his. No one can doubt that the story was told him by one of the savages, who fled, panic stricken, almost immediately upon the appearance of the English; possibly the same savage, who told the story, which we find in Vaudreuil's report of the transaction to the government at home. This certainly cannot be reassuring even to a partisan of the French.

That the savages, in common with other Pagan people, were notorious falsifiers, is a proposition which needs no discussion, and that these particular savages were such, appears plainly in the documents of the period, nay, in the words of Ralé himself. An analysis of this romantic story, which our English writers have been so ready to adopt in preference to the more commonplace account of their forefathers, and which will probably be repeated till the end of time by others as careless as themselves, shows it to be false in almost every particular, and it is one of the purposes

of this book, not only to make this plain, but to show that our forefathers were not murderers and assassins, as they have frequently been denominated, even by English writers, who should have known better; but, in order to preserve themselves and those dear to them, were driven to the necessity of subduing vis et armis their savage neighbors, who were deliberately incited by Ralé, and others of his countrymen, to make warfare upon them, and if in the course of this warfare one of its instigators suffered, he should not be denominated a martyr, nor his opponents by whom he suffered, murderers. My sole purpose in writing the following pages has been to present the exact truth, with regard to all matters connected with the transactions treated therein; "To naught extenuate, naught set down in malice." It will be observed that several stories, which passed current among the English derogatory to Ralé I have passed by in silence. In my opinion it would be rank injustice to his memory to repeat them, as they are wholly unsupported by proofs, and my intention has been to write nothing which is not so supported. If in these pages I have erred in any particular, no one will be so ready and so glad to correct the fault as myself.

JAMES PHINNEY BAXTER,

61 Deering Street, Portland, Me.

THE

PIONEERS OF NEW FRANCE

IN

NEW ENGLAND.

The spectator, as he reviews the motley company thronging the stage of history, is often struck by some grand figure, or group of figures, appearing in movements of surprising interest, and acting their part with a force and fidelity, which excites his admiration, though the movements in which they are engaged may at times seem to him to run counter to the spendid scheme of the drama before him.

Among these, perhaps, no group of men is more strikingly interesting than the "Blackrobes" of Ignatius Loyola,' the zealous, self-sacrificing and

1 Don Iñigo Lopez de Recalde de Loyola was born in 1491, at the castle of Loyola, near the town of Azcoytia, Guipúzcoa, in Spain. The name is said to have been derived from a device on the family escutcheon of two wolves regarding a pot suspended by a chain between them, with the words "Lobo Lobo y olla,"