Few stories are so dramatic, few have been so well told[2] as the tale of the Huron missions. No element of tragedy is wanting. The background of the scene gives a sense of distance and immensity. The action is comprised in very few years, years of bright promise, speedily followed by absolute desolation. The contrast between the actors on either side is as great as can be found in the range of human life, between savages almost superhuman in savagery, and Christian preachers almost superhuman in endurance and {87} self-sacrifice; and all through there runs the pity of it, the pathos of a religion of love bearing as its first-fruits barren martyrdom and wholesale extermination. [Footnote 2: By Francis Parkman in _The Jesuits in North America_.] Between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay the Hurons dwelt, accessible to the Frenchmen only by the Ottawa river and Lake Nipissing, for the Iroquois barred the alternative route up the St. Lawrence and by Lake Ontario. Montreal was left far behind, and many miles of a toilsome, dangerous route were traversed, until by the shores of the great freshwater sea were found the homes of a savage but a settled people. To men inspired by religion and by Imperial views of religion, who looked to be the ministers of a world-wide power, including and dominating all the kingdoms of the earth, the greatness of the distances, the remoteness of the land, the unbounded area of unknown waters stretching far off to the west, were but calls to the imagination and incentives to redoubled effort. But, ambitious as they were, the Jesuits were not mere enthusiasts: they were practical and politic men, diplomatists in the American backwoods as at the Court of France. Not wandering outcasts, like the Algonquins of the lower St. Lawrence; not, like the Iroquois, wholly given to perpetual murder; with some peaceful impulses, traders to a small extent, and tillers of the ground, and above all, since Champlain first came among them, sworn allies of the French--the Hurons seemed such a people as might be moulded to a new faith, and become a beacon attracting other North American natives to the light of Christianity. So the Jesuit fathers went among them in 1634, and in 1640 built and fortified a central mission station--St. Marie--a mile from where a little river--the Wye--flows into an inlet of Lake Huron.