That day the Hurons as a nation ceased to exist. Abandoning their remaining villages, they dispersed in small bands to roam northward and eastward, while a few established themselves at Isle St. Joseph, thinking to protect themselves here from their inveterate foes. As for the Jesuits, Garnier and Chabanel still laboured among the Tobacco nation farther to the south; but they too became the victims of the Iroquois before this fatal year was over. Famine and the rigours of winter presently worked sad havoc upon the little band to whom Ragueneau now ministered at Isle St. Joseph, and in the spring renewed attacks of the Iroquois led the Hurons to decide upon a remarkable enterprise. This was to migrate to Quebec and take refuge under the guns of Fort St. Louis. On the 10th of June all was ready for the departure, the sorrowing Hurons bidding good-bye to the home of their fathers, and the Jesuits to the country consecrated by the blood of their martyrs. Proceeding by the Georgian Bay, Lake Nipissing, the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, the fleet of canoes reached Quebec before the end of July, 1650. And while Quebec was ready to open her gates to the sorrowful remnant of a once great nation, her own position was sorely beset. Food was scarce and lodgings scarcer in the palisaded city. However, the Ursulines and the nuns of the Hospital made every effort to provide shelter for the exiled race, and the Jesuits themselves bore the chief burden of their converts. In the following year, 1651, four hundred more Hurons found their way to Quebec, and together they established a settlement on the Island of Orleans. Here, in sight of the protecting ramparts of the city, this decimated people lived for a time secure. But the Iroquois were set upon nothing less than their annihilation, and in 1656 they made a descent upon the quiet island and carried off many captives. The terrified Hurons were then removed to the city itself and lodged in a square enclosure almost adjoining Fort St. Louis. A map of 1660 places the "Fort des Sauvages" on the site of the present _Place d'Armes_. Here they dwelt for about ten years in the same uncertain security enjoyed by Quebec itself. Then they removed to Ste. Foye, four miles west of the city, and again changing their abode six years later, they founded the village of Old Lorette. Standing to-day on Dufferin Terrace, the observer sees spread beneath him the picturesque Côte de Beaupré, a graceful upland losing itself in the Laurentian foot-hills. A shining spire in the middle distance arrests the eye. It marks the village of Ancient Lorette, a nine miles' drive from Quebec, where a pitiful moiety of Canada's noblest Indian tribe ekes out an existence by the making of baskets and beaded moccasins, and by that nonchalant culture of the soil which still marks the primitive man. CHAPTER V ROYAL GOVERNMENT