King, whose subjects he wished to make them. On one occasion,
supported by a French officer and his {148} soldiers, drawn up under
arms, he thus addressed a large assemblage of Indians gathered at Sault
Ste. Marie:

"When our King attacks his enemies, he is more terrible than the thunder:
the earth trembles; the air and the sea are all on fire with the blaze of
his cannon; he is seen in the midst of his warriors, covered over with
the blood of his enemies, whom he kills in such numbers that he does not
count them by the scalps, but by the streams of blood which he causes to
flow. In each city he has storehouses where there are hatchets enough to
cut down all your forests, kettles enough to cook all your moose, and
beds enough to fill all your lodges. His house is higher than the
tallest of your trees and holds more families than the largest of your
towns. Men come from every quarter of the earth to listen to and admire
him. All that is done in the world is decided by him alone."

But we are not now concerned with such scheming priests. We wish to
sketch very briefly the story of some of those faithful and
single-hearted men who were true missionaries of religion. In their
journeys into the wilds they often proved themselves pathfinders,
penetrating {149} regions never before trodden by the foot of a white
man. Many a tribe got its first impression of our race from these
peaceful preachers. A mission priest, Le Caron, was the first white man
who saw Lake Huron. Another, the heroic Jogues, was the first of our
race to see Lake George. Thus the work of Catholic missionaries must
have a large place in any truthful account of early New France. In fact,
the history of Canada is for a long time the history of Jesuit activity.

These men were in the habit of sending to their superiors in the Old
World copious accounts of all that they saw or did. These reports, which
are known as the "Jesuit Relations," form a perfect storehouse of
information about early Canadian affairs and about the Indians with whom
the French were in contact.

These Jesuit priests commonly were highly educated men, accustomed to all
the refinements of life--some of them of noble families--and we can only
measure their devotion to the cause of religion when we realize the
contrast between their native surroundings and the repulsive savagery
into which they plunged when they went among the Indians. Think of such
a man as {150} Father Le Jeu