It was impossible to do anything with them till they had been gathered together in villages; and, as this was impossible, it was determined to penetrate further into the country of the Hurons, who were more settled. After a solemn council with the Huron chiefs who had come down the river, it was agreed that they should receive the missionaries. A dispute deferred the enterprise for a year, but when a year had passed Fathers Daniel, Davost, and Breboeuf were sent out to the Hurons. It was a toilsome journey. Barefoot, cramped in the canoes, laden like mules in the forest, separated at times, robbed and ill-treated, at last they all reached the Huron towns. Brebœuf had been deserted by his guides at what is now known as Thunder Bay. He hid his sacred altar vessels, and went in search of the town Ihonatiria. Soon he found it, and the crowd came out to receive him with rejoicing for they knew the familiar figure, and were glad that "Echom" had come again. Soon, also, came Daniel and Davost. If they only knew to what they had come ! If some divine revelation of the not very distant future had been given them in some vision of the noonday, or in some midnight dream, would they have remained? Knowing what we do of their fate, and knowing the feebleness of humanity, does it not seem to us that then their hands would have fallen helpless, and terror have come upon them like a thunder-clap! But there was no revelation, and they remained. THE PESTILENCE. At this time the missions had attracted some attention in France, through the accounts of those who had returned and the Relations of those who remained. Other missionaries soon came, in time to share in the danger and the toil-Fathers Jaques, Chaletain and Garnier. They were received with rejoicing; and, just as they had recruited their energies, the periodical pestilence broke out among the people. Pre vious to this some converts had been made among the adults, though for fear of backsliding the missionaries had been chary of baptism; now everything was jeopardized. Those who were thoroughly converted were confirmed by their trials. Those who were not relapsed to the Okis and Manitous of their youth. The whole mission was now depending on any slight accident. The Indians, in their dread of the pestilence, began to look black upon the missionaries, at the instigation of the sorcerers, as its probable cause. But still they went on with their work-and the small-pox went on with its work also. Now ensued a scene of horror and dismay and death on one side, and of sublime devotion to a sacred duty on the other, which has seldom been equalled either in the plague-haunted streets of London or Lisbon in the olden time, or when the frieze-clad friars were busy with the burying of the dead in the stricken city of the Adriatic. The small-pox raged from cabin to cabin, from village to village. From every wigwam over a vast space arose the cry that never fails to raise sympathetic feelings in human bosoms, the cry of a people sorrowing for its dead. All the stores that the missionaries had were lavished in aid of the stricken people. Daily as they went their dangerous rounds they exhorted, consoled the adult, and secretly baptized the dying infant whose parent would have slain the missionary had he seen the act. The sorcerers continued their insinuations with effect. It was the black robes that brought the small-pox. It was contained in their cross, in their weather streamers, in the secret places of their dwelling. Ill-feeling rose high against them. They walked in danger. The tomahawk was over their heads. They were threatened and assaulted. At last a council was called to condemn them. They escaped condemnation through the influence of Brebeuf : but it was given them to understand that their death was certain at last. So far the missions had got to be systematically arranged. The Huron towns had all been visited, and each had been named after a saint. They were partitioned into four districts. To these the Tobacco nation was added as a fifth, and Garnier and Jaques had been sent thither. The position and condition of the missions was now this:The districts had been arranged, and the missionaries were systematically at work in the wilderness. At Quebec changes had taken place of an important nature. A seminary for boys, a convent for girls, and an hospital for the sick, had been built. Madame de la Peltrie, the recital of whose romantic career is almost needless for the reader, had arrived from the Convent of the Ursulines at Tours, with Marie de St. Bernard and Marie de L'Incarnation, and they had begun that system of conventual life and education which is now so familiar to us all. They had taken, these delicate women, their share, and more than their share, in the labours of the missionaries at Quebec among the pestilence-vexed people, spend ing night and day in their terrible duty. Surely we yield them the tribute of our loyal admiration. Le Jeune and others are at Quebec; Brebœuf is among the Hurons; Jaques is among the Mohawks; Bressani is among the Iroquois. The missions are doing fairly well. The harvest is great, but the reapers are few though they are untiring. With Heaven's help a strong Christian Church will raise itself among the heathen, and New France shall be an honour to Old France, and all the labour shall not have been in vain! Such hopes might have animated the breasts of the Brethren in France, but those who were at Quebec were looking grave, and they had cause to be grave. The Iroquois have declared war-the most powerful and bloody nation in the NorthWest are on the war-path, and all the missions are at their mercy. The last act, the consummation of the growing tragedy, has come. He Father Jaques was the first sufferer. had gone to Quebec for altar service and supplies, and was on his way to his mission along the winding river in the shade of the silent forests. There is a yell and a volley from the rushes! The Huron guides. fly before the Iroquois, who bear down upon them in canoes. Jaques' companions are captured. He escapes, but seeing his companions in danger he returns in the midst of the enemy. They beat him with war clubs; they tear him with their teeth; they drag him along with a load on his back, and dying almost with unspeakable pain, and he as tender and delicate as a woman; they run him through the gauntlet of two hundred warriors with clubs; his thumbs are cut off with shells; and at night they stretch him on the ground, his limbs extended between stakes. But they do not kill him. He is in evil case; but still he goes on with his labours; his breviary he reads in the forest till the cold pierces his heart; and he stands up to rebuke his captors when they mock at his God. Shortly to sketch his career at this time, it suffices to say that he escapes through the kindness of the Dutch; and months afterwards the doors of a College in France are knocked at by an emaciated and mutilated man whom the Rector admits, and who falls at the Rector's feet to ask for a blessing on the head of Father Isaac Jaques! The day of his triumph is come. The king sends for him; queens and fair court ladies kiss those mutilated hands that, unless a dispensation is granted, will never offer sacrifice any more. That dispensation is granted; and after a period of rest Jaques is once more on his way to Canada, and we pass to scene the second. The war cloud is getting blacker. All over the country the Iroquois have spread. The Huron nation is melting like flax before fire, before the wrath of the banded Iroquois; and the second scene in the last act of the tragedy closes with the picture of Joseph Bressani, with his fingers split up into his hands, his hair and beard torn out by the roots, his body burnt with live coals; and with Père Anne de la Noue bewildered in the snow-blinded forest, kneeling in a space he had cleared for his grave, with his hands and eyes upraised to heaven, frozen dead. arrows tear through him, a ball pierces his heart and he dies. The savages bathe their faces in his blood and rush to finish the ruin. What had been begun by a massacre is finished by a conflagation; the mission of St. Joseph is in ruins. The deceptive and precarious Indian peace follows for a time; but eight months after war leaps again out of hell. The great heart of the mission, Brebœuf, giant in frame and martial in bearing, with the refined and gentle Lalement, are at St. Ignatius, and upon St. Ignatius the fire falls fiercely. The smoke and flames tell to those at St. Mary's, almost as soon as the fugitives, how fearful the ruin is being. A party is sent out to examine. They find a staring horror. Scorched and violated at the stake are the mangled remains of Breboeuf and Lalement. The Indians had known how great and brave the soldierly missionary was, and had taxed all their devilish ingenuity for tortures. They had beaten and scorched him. They had pour Peace had been patched up for a time, and the third scene opens with Jaques appearing once more among the Mohawks. Busily he plies his vocation, exhorting, rebuking, baptizing, for he feels his end is near. It is indeed near. The peace is broken, and Jaques is seized again. His treatment is too terrible to dwell on. At last he is brought to his death feast; and as he enters the lodge a hatchet is buried in his brain. Broken body, thou hast rest at last! Patient soul, thou hast now thy re-ed boiling water upon his head. They ward! Noblest of men, thou hast entered into thy nobility! near. The missions ripened as the end drew The Hurons, in deep terror at the ruin of their nation, flung themselves at the feet of the missionaries, and claimed their aid. But the end was coming. Conversions were rapid and baptisms many. There were churches with bells at St. Joseph, St. Ignatius, St. Michael, and St. John Baptist; and morning masses, and frequent ceremonies and sacraments. But the Iroquois were coming. It is at St. Joseph; it is July in the woods, balmy and beautiful. The mission house is crowded to the door. Antoine Daniel is at the altar. Suddenly there is a confusion in the distance. Then there is a wild cry "the Iroquois ! the Iroquois!" They are coming across the clearing. The warriors offer a faint resistance and fly. Daniel stands clad in the brilliant vestments of his office. Then a volley of hung round his neck a collar of red-hot hatchets. They had torn away his lips and his tongue. Then they killed him. The effort to keep collected had nearly burst his heart, and he failed early in the torture; his companion, gentle as a woman, had, like a woman, lasted long under the agony. EPILOGUE. Thus one by one the missions were done to death, with what accumulation of horrors it is needless to say. The tide of Iroquois war was not to be checked, and it overflowed nearly all the north, to the ruin of the missions for the time. The Huron nation was broken up; and the remaining missionaries gathered at Quebec. And thus closes one imperfect chapter in the history of our country. Men who yield no sort of submission to the claims of these missionaries' religion may not love their Order, and while acknowledging its magnificent achieve ments, its energy, and its power, may find fault with its policy and its principles. But no man who reverences heroism in the form of self-sacrifice, can help yielding a tribute of admiration to the memories of the men who, under burning summer suns and bitter winter skies, in doubt and danger, toiled in the beginning of our history; and who, whether friends failed them or not, whether hope comforted them or not, whether fate favoured them or not, looking straight to their one object, through yelling enemies and charred villages, through weary miles of wilderness, and the barriers which winter had piled in their track, saw only that souls, as they believed, were to be saved, and above all saw, shining in the heavens, the crown of glory that was to be the reward of the labours of their lives, and the consolation of their disastrous death. M. J. GRIFFIN. GENIUS. BY MRS. MOODIE. BELLEVILLE. HE inspiration which by God is given, TH Born of the light, like light belongs to heaven; The eagle soaring to the noon of day, Meets with unblenching gaze the solar ray, Sailing through heaven's wide space on pinions free, The thrilling ecstasy absorbs his sight, And bathes his spirit in the fount of light. THE LEGAL INTERPRETATION OF THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. BY JAMES BEATY, JR. HE Washington Treaty is a document claims on the part of the United States and To such special importance in the in- to provide for the speedy settlement of such terests of peace and humanity, that its contents cannot be too carefully examined or its meaning too critically elucidated. The interpretations already given to it; specially with reference to the character or extent of "the claims" submitted by it; have not in all points done justice to its true import. We will not now detail the events preceding the appointment of the Joint High Commission, to put all the questions arising out of the "Alabama claims" "in the way of a final and amicable settlement." The history of those facts will no doubt be sufficiently fresh in the minds of our readers. We will at once enter upon an examination of the treaty, with the view of ascertaining the meaning which a disinterested tribunal -say the Tribunal of Arbitration-ought to place upon the document as to the claims submitted by it; the satisfactory determination of which may involve consequences of such serious import as the maintenance of peace and cordial relations between two great nations, who ought to cherish common sympathies arising from their community of race, language, literature and laws. In pursuit of this object, the first enquiry would be, what must be understood by the recital in the first paragraph of the treaty, where it is said: "Whereas differences have arisen between the Government of the United States and the Government of Her Britannic Majesty, and still exist, growing out of the Acts committed by the several vessels which have given rise to the claims generically known as the Alabama claims"; and also that portion of the third paragraph where it is stated that in order to adjust all claims"; the "High contracting parties agree that all the said claims growing out of acts committed by the aforesaid vessels and generically known as the Alabama claims shall be referred to a Tribunal of Arbitration"? To ascertain what matters were contemplated by those words and what "claims" were "referred" to the "Tribunal," the Arbitrators are to "proceed impartially and carefully to examine and decide all questions that shall be laid before them." The high contracting parties have since the appointment of the Arbitrators laid before them their "cases" respectively; which occupy large volumes and involve a complete history from the standpoint of each side of the whole controversy. If the arbitrators were asked to determine this question, they would require to consider these paragraphs calmly from an "impartial" standpoint, and regardless of the vociferated views of plaintiff and defendant thrown in such ponderous tomes at their selected heads. From this point of view we will as far as possible examine this treaty. With our present object in mind, a brief review of facts with respect to "the claims" will not be out of place, to enable us to arrive at an intelligent conclusion. The Alabama escaped from England on the 29th of July, 1862, after construction there, but without fitting out or equipments of any kind of a warlike character, except the build. The Florida departed from England on the 22nd March, 1862, under the name of the Oreto. She was designed for warlike purposes, and was duly registered as a British vessel. No tangible evidence. |