We find him, even when at last domiciled in some far-away village, working against hope to save the unbaptized from eternal damnation; we seem to see the rising storm of opposition, invoked by native medicine-men,--who to his seventeenth-century imagination seem devils indeed,--and at last the bursting climax of superstitious frenzy which sweeps him and his before it. Not only do these devoted missionaries,--never, in any field, has been witnessed greater personal heroism than theirs,--live and breathe before us in the _Relations_; but we have in them our first competent account of the Red Indian, at a time when relatively uncontaminated by contact with Europeans. We seem, in the _Relations_, to know this crafty savage, to measure him intellectually as well as physically, his inmost thoughts as well as open speech. The fathers did not understand him from an ethnological point of view, as well as he is to-day understood; their minds were tinctured with the scientific fallacies of their time. But, with what is known to-day, the photographic reports in the _Relations_ help the student to an accurate picture of the untamed aborigine, and much that mystified the fathers, is now, by aid of their careful journals, easily susceptible of explanation. Few periods of history are so well illuminated as the French régime in North America. This we owe in large measure to the existence of the Jesuit _Relations_. What are generally known as the _Relations_ proper, addressed to the superior and published in Paris, under direction of the provincial, commence with Le Jeune's _Brieve Relation du Voyage de la Nouvelle-France_ (1632); and thereafter a duodecimo volume, neatly printed and bound in vellum, was issued annually from the press of Sebastien Cramoisy, in Paris, until 1673, when the series was discontinued, probably through the influence of Frontenac, to whom the Jesuits were distasteful. The _Relations_ at once became popular in the court circles of France; their regular appearance was always awaited with the keenest interest, and assisted greatly in creating and fostering the enthusiasm of pious philanthropists, who for many years substantially maintained the missions of New France. In addition to these forty volumes, which to collectors are technically known as "Cramoisys," many similar publications found their way into the hands of the public, the greater part of them bearing date after the suppression of the Cramoisy series. Some were printed in Paris and Lyons by independent publishers; others appeared in Latin and Italian texts, at Rome, and other cities in Italy; while in such journals as _Mercure François_ and _Annuæ Litteræ Societatis Jesu_, occasionally were published letters from the missionaries, of the same nature as the _Relations_, but briefer and more intimate in tone.