Missionary labours having now acquired a national importance, Montreal was converted, with many religious ceremonies, into the head-quarters of the Christianised Indians, intended to form a post of communication between Quebec and Lake Huron. Champlain, the governor, being now dead, was succeeded by M. de Montmagny. There were at this time upwards of fifty missionaries employed; twice or thrice a year they assembled at St. Mary’s, the rest of the time they were scattered among the Indians. These adventurous men not only carried the gospel of Christ into the wilderness, and to the hitherto unknown inhabitants on the banks of vast lakes and rivers, but every year extended the geographical knowledge of the interior. Within very few years after the commencement of these labours, a scheme was formed to carry the gospel to the south of Lake Huron, to Lake Michigan and Green Bay, thus advancing into the immense regions of the north-west and west. Views, as it were, were opened up into the remote wilderness, by the occasional visits at some missionary outpost of Indians from remote nations, who reported of distant rivers and regions where as yet the white man was unknown. Thus came a chief from the head-waters of the Ohio, and others from the wandering Algonquins. The French had as yet been kept from the Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the more southern waters of the St. Lawrence, by the determined hostility of the Mohawks, so that their access to the west was by the river Ottawa; although Brebeuf had visited the neutral tribes about Niagara. In 1641, Charles Raymbault and Claude Pijart appeared as missionaries among the Algonquins of Lake Nipissing. It was towards the close of summer when the Jesuits arrived, and the great festival of the dead was about to be celebrated by these wandering tribes. To this ceremony all the confederated nations assembled, their canoes covering the waters of the lake as they advanced towards a bay on the shores of which the ceremony was to take place. As the boats approached, they were received with shouts which echoed among the rocks. Beneath a long shed lay the bones of the dead in coffins of bark, incased in rich furs; all night long the mourning-song of the war-chiefs was chanted, accompanied by the wailing of the women. When these savage but mournful ceremonies were ended, the Jesuits made known their wish of penetrating the more distant wilderness, and conveying thither the light of a new and milder religion, and by their presents and gentle words so won upon the savages, that an invitation was given to visit the nation of the Chippewas below the falls of St. Mary.