r_, near the spot where now stands the city of Peoria, on
the Illinois river; and even the name of his little fortress
(_Crevecoeur_, Broken Heart) was a mournful record of his shattered
fortunes. The means of carrying out his noble enterprise (the colonizing
of the Mississippi valley) were lost; the labor of years had been
rendered ineffectual by one shipwreck; his men were discontented, even
mutinous, "attempting," says Hennepin, "first to poison, and then desert
him;" his mind was distracted, his heart almost broken, by accumulated
disasters. Surrounded thus by circumstances which might well have
rendered him careless of the feelings of the savages around him, he
observed that they had become cold and distant--that in effect they no
longer viewed him as their friend. The Iroquois,[54] drifting from the
shores of Lake Ontario, where they had always been the bitterest foes of
the French, had instilled fear and hatred into their minds; it was even
said that some of his own men had encouraged the growing discontent. In
this juncture, what measures does he take? Strengthen his
fortifications, and prepare for war, as the men of other nations had
done? Far from it. Soldier and adventurer as he was, he had no wish to
shed innocent blood; though with his force he might have defied all the
nations about him. He went as a friend, frankly and generously, among
them, and demanded the reasons of their discontent. He touched their
hearts by his confidence, convinced them of his friendship, and attached
them to himself more devotedly than ever. A whole history in one brief
passage!

But it is more especially to the _voyageurs_ of the church--the men of
faith and love--that I wish to direct my readers' attention: To such men
as Le Caron, a Franciscan, with all the zeal and courage and
self-abnegation of his order, who wandered and preached among the bloody
Iroquois, and upon the waters of Huron, as early as 1616: to Mesnard, a
devoted missionary of the same order, who, in 1660, founded a mission at
the Sault de Ste. Marie, and then went into the forest to induce the
savages to listen to the glad tidings he had brought, and never came
back: to Father Allouez, who rebuilt the mission five years afterward
(the first of these houses of God which was not destroyed or abandoned),
who subsequently crossed the lakes, and preached to the Indians on Fox
river, where, in one of the villages of the Miamis and Mascoutens,
Marquette found a cross