Canada: the Empire of the North: Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to KingdomLaut, Agnes C.
History
Canada: the Empire of the North: Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom
Laut, Agnes C.
Canada -- History
What were the letters, what the adventures described by the Jesuits,
that aroused such zeal and inspired such heroism? It would require
many volumes to record the adventures of the Jesuits in Canada, and a
long list to include all their heroes martyred for the faith. Only a
few of the most prominent episodes in the Jesuits' adventures can be
given here.
When Pierre le Jeune reached Quebec after the victory of the Kirke
brothers, he found only the charred remains of a mission on the old
site of Cartier's winter quarters down on the St. Charles. Of houses,
only the gray-stone cottage of Madame Hebert had been left standing.
Here Le Jeune was welcomed and housed till the little mission could be
rebuilt. At first it consisted of only mud-plastered log cabins,
thatch-roofed, divided into four rooms, with garret and cellar. One
room decorated with saints' images and pictures served as chapel;
another, as {80} kitchen; a third, as lodgings; the fourth, as
refectory. In this humble abode six Jesuit priests and two lay
brothers passed the winter after the war. The roof leaked like a
sieve. The snow piled high almost as the top of the door. Le Jeune's
first care was to obtain pupils. These consisted of an Indian boy and
a negro lad left by the English. Meals of porridge given free
attracted more Indian pupils; but Le Jeune's greatest difficulty was to
learn the Indian language. Hearing that a renegade Indian named
Pierre, who had served the French as interpreter, lodged with some
Algonquins camped below Cape Diamond, Le Jeune tramped up the river
bank, along what is now the Lower Road, where he found the Indians
wigwamming, and by the bribe of free food obtained Pierre. Pierre was
at best a tricky scoundrel, who considered it a joke to give Le Jeune
the wrong word for some religious precept, gorged himself on the
missionaries' food, stole their communion wine, and ran off at Lent to
escape fasting.
[Illustration: PIERRE LE JEUNE]
When Champlain returned to receive Quebec back from the English, more
priests joined the Jesuits' mission. Among them was the lion-hearted
giant, Brébeuf.
If Champlain's bush lopers could join bands of wandering Indians for
the extension of French dominion, surely the Jesuits could dare as
perilous a life "for the greater glory of God,"--as their vows declared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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