Watching for the departure of the great canoe fleet to Quebec in 1648, the Iroquois made a sudden attack on Huronia and Father Daniel and his village of St. Joseph were slaughtered. Next spring they returned, put St. Ignace to the sword, took the village of St. Louis and stripped and bound to stakes the Fathers Brebeuf and Lalemant. The tortures to which these good men were put before they were killed can hardly be imagined and cannot be described, all of which they stood with amazing fortitude. Indeed, even the Indians, stolid as they were, could not help admiring the courage of these martyrs for they drank the blood of Brebeuf that they might be as brave as he. The spirit of these men can be understood in the description given us by Marjorie Pickthall, one of our own poets, of Father Lalemant, on a missionary journey: “My hour of rest is done; On the smooth ripple lifts the long canoe; The hemlocks murmur sadly as the sun Slants his dim arrows through. Whither I go I know not, nor the way, Dark with strange passions, vexed with heathen charms, Holding I know not what of life or death; Only be Thou beside me day by day, Thy rod my guide and comfort, underneath Thy everlasting arms.” And so the Iroquois went through Huronia burning and scalping until there was only a mass of ruins, and the remnant of the Hurons fled to St. Joseph, on Christian Island, in Georgian Bay. Here they built a fort, but soon realized that in such an isolated position they could be starved out. Part of the nation went to Quebec, where they were protected and given some land, and part went to Michillimackinac, and thence to Lake Superior, where Father Marquette found them. Driven out by fear of the Sioux they returned to Mackinac, and thence some of them settled near Detroit, where under the name of Wyandots, they took part in the rising against the English known as Pontiac’s war, just after the capture of Quebec by Wolfe. This story of Huronia has been told in some detail because it illustrates the work of the men of the Black Robe who shrank from no sacrifice, who knew no fear, and for whom there could be no earthly reward. Huronia was the greatest of the missions of the Jesuits, for there were twenty-five members of the Order working among these people.