r passports and instructions. What the
instructions were can only be guessed by subsequent developments. The
messengers left the depth of the forest on the 19th of September, and
had returned from Quebec by the 10th of October. Snow was falling.
The streams had frozen, and the Indians had gone into camp for the
winter. Going from wigwam to wigwam through the drifted forest. Father
Albanel passed the winter preaching to the savages. Skins of the chase
were laid on the wigwams. Against the pelts, snow was banked to close
up every chink. Inside, the air was blue with smoke and the steam of
the simmering kettle. Indian hunters lay on the moss floor round the
central fires. Children and dogs crouched heterogeneously against the
sloping tent walls. Squaws plodded through the forest, setting traps
and baiting the fish-lines that hung through airholes of the thick ice.
In these lodges Albanel wintered. He was among strange Indians and
suffered incredible hardships. Where there was room, he, too, sat
crouched under the crowded tent walls, scoffed at by the braves, teased
by the unrebuked children, eating when the squaws threw waste food to
him, going hungry when his French companions failed to bring in game.
Sometimes night overtook him on the trail. Shovelling a bed through
the snow to the moss with his snow-shoes, piling shrubs as a
wind-break, and kindling a roaring fire, the priest passed the night
under the stars.

When spring came, the Indians opposed his passage down the river. A
council was called. Albanel explained that his message was to bring
the Indians down to Quebec and keep them from going to the English for
trade. The Indians, who had acted as middlemen between Quebec traders
and the Northern tribes, saw the advantage of undermining the English
trade. Gifts were presented by the Frenchmen, and the friendship of
the Indians was secured. On June 1, 1672, sixteen savages embarked
with the three Frenchmen. For the next ten days, the difficulties were
almost insurmountable. The river tore through a deep gorge of sheer
precipices which the _voyageurs_ could pass only by clinging to the
rock walls with hands and feet. One _portage_ was twelve miles long
over a muskeg of quaking moss that floated on water. At every step the
travellers plunged through to their waists. Over this the long canoes
and baggage had to be carried. On the 10th of June they reached the
height of land that divides the waters