The Recollects had thus undertaken to evangelize two races, who, with their kindred, extended from the ocean to the Mississippi, from the Chesapeake and Ohio to the frozen lands of the Esquimaux. Their languages, differing from all known to European scholars in vocabulary, forms, and the construction of sentences, offered incredible difficulties. The ideas these Indians held of a future state were so obscure, that it was not easy to find enough of natural religion by which to lead them to the revealed. Progress was naturally slow,—there was more to discourage than to cheer. Still the Franciscans labored on; and though their number was limited to six, they had in 1625 five missions at Tadousac, Quebec, Three Rivers, among the Nipissings, and in the Huron country. Finding that the mission field in New France required an order bound to less scrupulous poverty than their own, the Recollects of Paris invited the Jesuits to aid them. Enemond Masse, of the unfortunate Acadian mission, with Charles Lalemant and John de Brebeuf, came over in 1625. The old opposition to the order was renewed. The Jesuits were homeless, till the Recollects opened the doors of their convent to them. Commanding resources from influential friends, they soon began to build, and brought over men to swell the settlement and cultivate the ground. They joined the Recollects in the missions already founded, profiting by their experience. This enabled the Church to extend its missions. Father Joseph de la Roche d’Aillon, leaving the Hurons, struck southwesterly, and founded a mission among the Neutral Nation, apparently on the eastern bank of the Niagara, and urged his countrymen to open direct communication by way of Lake Ontario with that fertile part of the country. The little colony at Quebec was, however, on the verge of starvation; and after once baffling the English, Champlain surrendered in 1629, and the missions of the Recollects and Jesuits came to a close. A mere handful of converts was all the reward of their long and zealous labors, and these they were compelled to leave exposed to the danger of lapsing back into their original heathendom. We cannot trace very distinctly the system adopted by the Recollects and their Jesuit auxiliaries during this first period of mission labor in Canada. Their usual course was to remain during the pleasant months at the French posts,—Quebec, Three Rivers, and Tadousac,—attending to the spiritual wants of the French and of the Indians who encamped near by for trade, and then to follow an Indian band on its winter hunt. The Recollects spoke despondingly. Some young men were taken to France and instructed there,—one, Peter Anthony, having the Prince de Guimené as his sponsor in baptism. But they found it almost impossible to keep the young for any prolonged instruction, and they hesitated to baptize adults, except in case of danger of death.