tes and plan the
next day's campaign.

By 1645, five mission houses had been established, with Ste. Marie on
the Wye, east of Midland, as the central house. Near Lake Simcoe were
two missions,--St. Jean Ba'tiste and St. Joseph; near Penetang, St.
Louis, and St. Ignace. Westward of Ste. Marie on the Wye were half a
dozen irregular missions among the Tobacco Indians. Each of the five
regular missions boasted palisaded inclosures, a chapel of log slabs
with bell and spire, though the latter might be only a high wooden
cross. At Ste. Marie, the central station, were lodgings for sixty
people, a hospital, kitchen garden, with cattle, pigs, and poultry. At
various times soldiers had been sent up by the Quebec governors, till
some thirty or forty were housed at Ste. Marie. In all were eighteen
priests, four lay brothers, seven white servants, and twenty-three
volunteers, unpaid helpers--donnes, they were called, young men
ardently religious, learning woodlore and the Indian language among the
Jesuits, as well as exploring whenever it was possible for them to
accompany the Indians. Among the volunteers was one Chouart
Groseillers, who, if he did not accompany Father Jogues on a preaching
tour to the tribes of Lake Superior, had at least gone as far as the
Sault and learned of the vast unexplored world beyond Lake Superior.
{86} Food, as always, played a large part in winning the soul of the
redskin. On church fete days as many as three thousand people were fed
and lodged at Ste. Marie. That the priests suffered many trials among
the unreasonable savages need not be told. When it rained too heavily
they were accused of ruining the crops by praying for too much rain;
when there was drouth they were blamed for not arranging this matter
with their God; and when the scourge of smallpox raged through the
Huron villages, devastating the wigwams so that the timber wolves
wandered unmolested among the dead, it was easy for the humpback
sorcerer to ascribe the pestilence also to the influence of the Black
Robes. Once their houses were set on fire. Again and again their
lives were threatened. Often after tramping twenty miles through the
sleet-soaked, snow-drifted spring forests, arriving at an Indian
village foredone and exhausted, the Jesuit was met with no better
welcome than a wigwam flap closed against his entrance, or a rabble of
impish children hooting and jeering him as he sought shelter from house
to house.

But a