Up to this time nothing had been done by the various trading companies that had been formed towards the evangelization of the native tribes, nor even for meeting the spiritual necessities of the Europeans settled or trading in New France. Champlain, who remained in France during the whole of the following year (1614), thought it time to take the matter in hand. He therefore arranged with the Provincial of the Recollet Fathers, a sub-order of the Franciscans, that six of their members should go out to New France as missionaries, their maintenance and lodging to be provided by the company. Four of the fathers sailed with him from France in the ship _St. Etienne_ of three hundred and fifty tons, on the 24th April 1615, and arrived at Quebec about the 1st of June. They were received with many tokens of satisfaction, but the good fathers were not long in discovering that there was very little zeal for religion in the colony, and that their work was going to be beset with the most serious difficulties and discouragements. A Recollet writer, Theodat Sagard, who came to Canada a year or two later, and who wrote a most interesting record of his experiences, says that the French themselves, who were supposed to be Christians, were by their scandalous lives the greatest impediment to the conversion of the Indians. We gather from Champlain's narrative that the first celebration of the mass took place at Riviere des Prairies, a few miles below Montreal, before a few French and a large number of Indians, "who were full of admiration at the ceremonies practised, and the ornaments used, the latter in particular seeming to them, unaccustomed as they were to such things, very beautiful and interesting."