The conversion, therefore, of the Indian was next to impossible, unless indeed the first step could be the destruction of priest and temple. Chanco and Pocahontas, and possibly Kemps, were for many years the only fruits of the labours of the missionaries. Taunted by the powers at home with this fact, the colonists retorted that they had sent many Indians to England, not one of whom returned converted to Christianity. The Indian chief Pepisco was long an object of hope at Jamestown, because of his apparently candid willingness to believe in the God of the Christian; but the utmost he could attain was a belief that the Indian gods were suitable for the Indian, but that the greater nation needed the greater God, for whose good offices he was willing to entreat through the white man. Had the fate of the Indian been to live in peace and friendship with his white brother to this day, it is not probable he would have ever been at heart a Christian. Druidism long survived, though in obscurity and decay, the thunder of the imperial edicts. It did more than survive in Ireland--it flourished until the fifth century, when it fell before the Christian enthusiasm of St. Patrick. Long after the Druidical priesthood was extinct, Druidical superstitions, Druidical rites, were dear to the common people. Nor will they become utterly extinct until we cease to gather the mistletoe and forget the sports and pastimes at Hallowe'en. So grim and mysterious was the principal temple at Uttamussac on the Pamunkey, that the trembling Indian in his canoe hurried past it with bated breath, solemnly casting into the waters pieces of the precious copper, puccoon, and strings of pearls. In this temple, and in two others beside it, were images of devils, and upon raised platforms the swathed skeletons of their greatest kings. The place was so holy that none but priests entered it. There they questioned Okeus and received verbal answers. [Illustration: "The trembling Indian in his canoe hurried past it with bated breath."] The chief priest and his assistants wore a sacred official robe ornamented with serpent skins. Their faces were painted in the most frightful devices they could imagine. Their heads were wreathed, Medusa-like, with stuffed serpents, and in their hands they carried rattlesnakes' tails, as symbols of their profession. Their devotion was in antiphonal chants or songs, led by the chief priest, and often interrupted by his starts, passionate gestures, and ejaculations. At his every pause the attending priests groaned a sort of fearsome "amen." We may fancy the Indian on dark nights hurrying past with muffled paddle as the weird songs and groans were borne by the midnight breeze to his trembling ears! They held the belief, common with all mankind, of the immortality of the soul, of the home--ah! in all faiths, so far away--of the escaped spirit. But this immortality was the reward only of the faithful. All others passed into utter nothingness.