heir
converts was invaluable. In the wilderness dens of the Hurons or the
Iroquois, the early Jesuit was a marvel of self-sacrificing zeal; his
successor, half missionary and half agent of the King, had thought for
this world as well as the next.

Sebastien Rale,[230] born in Franche-Comte in 1657, was sent to the
American missions in 1689 at the age of thirty-two. After spending two
years among the Abenakis of Canada, then settled near the mouth of the
Chaudiere, he was sent for two years more to the Illinois, and thence to
the Abenakis of the Kennebec, where he was to end his days.

Near where the town of Norridgewock now stands, the Kennebec curved
round a broad tongue of meadow land, in the midst of a picturesque
wilderness of hills and forests. On this tongue of land, on ground a few
feet above the general level, stood the village of the Norridgewocks,
fenced with a stockade of round logs nine feet high. The enclosure was
square; each of its four sides measured one hundred and sixty feet, and
each had its gate. From the four gates ran two streets, or lanes, which
crossed each other in the middle of the village. There were twenty-six
Indian houses, or cabins, within the stockade, described as "built much
after the English manner," though probably of logs. The church was
outside the enclosure, about twenty paces from the east gate.[231]

Such was the mission village of Norridgewock in 1716. It had risen from
its ashes since Colonel Hilton destroyed it in 1705, and the church had
been rebuilt by New England workmen hired for the purpose.[232] A small
bell, which is still preserved at Brunswick, rang for mass at early
morning, and for vespers at sunset. Rale's leisure hours were few. He
preached, exhorted, catechised the young converts, counselled their
seniors for this world and the next, nursed them in sickness, composed
their quarrels, tilled his own garden, cut his own firewood, cooked his
own food, which was of Indian corn, or, at a pinch, of roots and acorns,
worked at his Abenaki vocabulary, and, being expert at handicraft, made
ornaments for the church, or moulded candles from the fruit of the
bayberry, or wax-myrtle.[233] Twice a year, summer and winter, he
followed his flock to the sea-shore and the islands, where they lived at
their ease on fish and seals, clams, oysters, and seafowl.

This Kennebec mission had been begun more than half a century before;
yet the conjurers, or "medicine men,"--natural enem