weak for so great an enterprise, at least I am, and therefore I beseech our Reverend Father Provincial and Your Reverence to send us help. For this I could cry willingly to the good God, _mitte quem missurus es_; as for us, we are children, who can only stammer. Yet see what we, trusting in the goodness of Our Lord, and not in our own strength and skill, [182] have done for the conversion of this People since our arrival. In the first place, we have been employed in the study of the language, which, on account of the diversity of its compound words, is almost infinite. One can, nevertheless, do nothing without this study. All the French who are here have eagerly applied themselves to it, reviving the ancient usage of writing on birch-bark, for want of paper. Fathers Davost and Daniel have worked at it, beyond all; they know as many words as I, and perhaps more; but they have not yet had practice in forming and joining them together promptly, although Father Daniel already explains himself passably well. As for me, who give lessons therein to our French, if God does not assist me extraordinarily, I shall yet have to go a long time to the school of the Savages, so prolific is [183] their language. That does not prevent me from understanding almost all they say, and from making them fairly understand my meaning, even in the explanation of our most ineffable mysteries. In addition, we have employed ourselves in visiting, entreating, and instructing the sick, who have been, as I have said, very numerous. It has been in this pious exercise that we have won souls for our Lord, to the number of thirteen. The first was a little girl of this village, only four or five months old; she died a quarter of an hour after her baptism, in which she was named Josepha, to fulfill a vow I had made to give this name to the first that we should regenerate with the holy waters,--in gratitude for so many favors that we have received and are receiving [184] by the interposition of that great Saint. This was on the sixth of September, 1634. The second was another little girl, about two years of age, whom we baptized on the next day. She died on the eleventh of the same month and year, having been named Marie.