speaking, the sounds seem to come from afar. Thus my host, while to me, who stood at his elbow, unintelligible, was saying to the inhabitants of the next village, "Listen to me, friends. High up on the mountain, close to the great beach-tree with the withered branch, my little boy, Janko, is tending my white-footed mule. Tell him to bring it home without delay." The people of the village took up the message; and thus it was transmitted from mouth to mouth till it reached Janko. The white-footed mule was accordingly with me at the proper time.

This method of vocal communication is used for many purposes. If a shepherd feel lonely in the mountain where his flock is feeding, he conveys his voice in the way I have indicated to the air, sure that the winds or echoes will carry it to the ear of some other herdsman, who responds, and then they carry on a conversation across vale and hill, which solaces the solitude of both. Should a traveler be seen passing by of suspicious appearance, who might be an enemy of the country, he is described by the minutest details, in all directions, the winged messengers of the air transmitting the accounts of him from mountain peak to mountain peak, till the whole counry is alive with the news.

This system of throwing their words upon the winds is, above all, important on the frontiers, particularly those toward Turkey, whence acts of aggression often take place. Here, therefore, the shepherds are always on the look-out, and when a troop of Turkish marauders passes the boundaries, and perhaps invades a secluded valley for the purpose of carrying off the cattle, the alarm is instantly given. In a short time the valley swarms with armed men, who hurry down the mountain slopes in pursuit of the enemy, whom they generally overtake and slay, and return in triumph, probably with a few Turks' heads on their spikes. The barbarous custom of cutting off the heads of their foes, and keeping them as trophies of victory, shows the uncivilized, I may say the I unchristianized state of these Montenegrins, though they belong to the Greek Church. How often have I wished, in witnessing the wonders effected by the power of the wind-voices, that they might yet be made the means of conveying the Gospel of peace to these valorous but

reckless mountaineers!

FATHER LE MOINE AND THE

THE

IROQUOIS INDIANS.

THE middle of the seventeenth century was distinguished for events that foreshadowed a state of things in the civilized world which had no prototype in the history of former ages. These symptomatic elements of revolution and change, however, were not sufficiently developed to excite the alarm of tyrants, and induce them to relinquish their usurpations of the rights of humanity. The divine right of kings to rule the nations, and of popes to rule kings and their subjects, asserted and maintained by each, severally, began to be questioned in high places; and though authority suppressed the free discussion of this monstrous pretension, the conviction of its absurdity was not quenched in the bosoms of the masses, whose enlightened understandings and manly instincts told them that civil freedom and religious liberty are the rightful inheritance of man.

Although the suppressed elements of civil and religious freedom broke forth under the reign of the complaisant Elizabeth, as they were developed in the principles and conduct of the Puritans, Nonconformists, Dissenters, and Independents, until the fabric of the civil and ecclesiastical government was shaken to its center, and its forms changed under the dictator, Cromwell, tyranny did not despair of recovering its dominion, and more effectually subduing the spirit of liberty. The persecutions of the Puritans by Elizabeth and the Stuarts drove many of them from the country, which it was vainly hoped would dishearten those that remained, and subdue them into a spirit of submission to the rule of their oppressors, which became more intolerant and cruel as they saw toleration tended to multiply the number and increase the boldness of the friends of freedom.

Meanwhile the reign of Louis XIV., surnamed "the Great," was in the highest tide of its prosperity in France. Here Charles, the royal fugitive, found protection, and ample means to nurse his wrath against the men and the principles that had caused the tragical death of his father and his own uncomfortable exile. The whole career of the ambitious Louis indicated his designs to strangle freedom in his dominions, and throw the entire weight of

his powerful influence on the side of popery and civil despotism. His own views and expectations with respect to the probable decay of republican principles, and the final subjugation of the spirit of freedom, was manifest in his revocation of the Edict of Nantes, thereby banishing fifty thousand of the best families from his dominions.

This state of things in the two great powers of Europe was neither unknown nor unheeded by the watchful emissaries of Rome, who were skilled in the art of turning to the account of their own ambitious designs whatever might promise to favor their advancement in the political changes that occurred, or seemed likely to occur, in the world.

England and France both had colonial possessions in America. The former on the coast of the Atlantic, the latter north and west of the great lakes. In the former, particularly New England and New York, the spirit of civil and religious freedom, or at least of hostility to the mummeries and intolerance of Rome, was too deeply rooted to be eradicated, or subverted to the purposes of civil and ecclesiastical despotism, except by such artifices as Jesuits only can employ, aided by the most favorable conjunction of political commotions. And such a conjunction they never failed to seize upon and improve.

New France, as the Canadas were then called, had attracted but little attention from the government at home. The city of Quebec was not fifty years old. Montreal and Three Rivers were in their infancy. These were the only settlements of any consequence in the colony of New France, and they were little more than respectable trading posts, at which a traffic was carried on with the Indians for their furs. The whole of the upper province was an unbroken wilderness, known only to the native tribes who were scattered abroad over its vast surface.

Neglected by the mother country as not promising to contribute anything to the national splendor, for which Frenchmen never fail to look forward in every enterprise in which they engage, the affairs of the colony were managed and cared for principally by merchants of fortune, who found means to bring into it many of their countrymen, from the advantages the fur trade with the Indians afforded. The

chief object with them was to preserve the good will of the Indians, and attach them by every possible means to their interests, in order to secure their trade. This object governed all their transactions with the surrounding tribes, and molded their internal policy as a commercial community.

But there was another class in the colony who were less conspicuous in the commercial and civil affairs of the colony than the secular adventurers with whom they were associated, but were by no means less intent and determined to render every advantage the new colonial enterprise might furnish subservient to their ambitious designs. At Quebec the Jesuits planted their standard side by side with that of the merchants and other colonists. A writer in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia says:

"The province of New France very soon became as much a missionary station as a commercial settlement. A very general zeal for

the Christian instruction of the Indians was excited throughout the French empire, and many individuals of rank and property devoted their lives and their fortunes to the cause. The Jesuits, however, soon engrossed the sole direction of this undertaking, and were greatly instrumental in obstructing the prosperity of the colony, both by their perpetual contentions, which they maintained with the governors, and by the pernicious effects which their labors produced upon the character of the natives."

Such was the fruit of their labors upon the interests of the colony when that fruit had attained the strength of maturity. But in the incipiency of their operations, when there were no governors for them to contend with, and no settled form of government to regulate and direct the agencies which were at work at random in the colony, their inherent zeal and activity naturally thrust them forward, and gave them an influence in molding the elements and directing the forces which were maturing to be brought into requisition in forming a more permanent civil compact. The tribes of Indians who were most accessible, as the Hurons, near Quebec, and the Algonquins and Abenaquis, at the St. Lawrence, were soon brought under the control of the missionaries, and through their influence attached to the French interests. Thus was commenced a course of policy which contemplated the subjugation of the settlements in the New World to the Catholic powers of the Old, through the powerful agency of the warring tribes of American savages, controlled

and directed by the Jesuits. And to carry out this purpose of establishing papacy and Jesuitical rule and dominancy in North America, it was of the utmost importance to bring all the tribes to repudiate the English colonists and ally themselves to the French. To accomplish this object the Jesuits directed all their energies, under the profession of laboring solely for the spiritual good of the savage tribes. And it must be confessed that if zeal, and labor, and self-denial, and suffering for the cause, be taken as a test of pious concern for the salvation of these perishing pagans, they made a fair show of being imbued with the true missionary spirit.

Richelieu was at that period the leading spirit in France, if not in Europe. He had studied at Rome, been Bishop of Lucon, was made secretary of state by Mary de Medicis, and finally placed in the responsible office of prime minister of France, and afterward of superintendent of navigation and commerce. The intrigue by which he effected a reconciliation between the queen, who had elevated him to power, and her son, Louis XIII., the address by which he secured the favor of Louis and the applause of the nation, and the powerful influence he was enabled to exert to procure the banishment of the king's brother, and of Mary de Medicis, the queen to whom he owed his elevation, marked him as qualified by every requisite trait of character to act as prime leader in any device that the Jesuits might project. And they could not doubt his hearty good will to aid them by all the means in his power in their efforts to establish the supremacy of their order in the North American colonies, when they considered how he had distinguished himself by his zeal to annoy and distress the Protestant subjects of the government he controlled. Being raised to the dignity of a cardinal, he determined to reduce Rochelle, whose protection of the Protestants was offensive to his Catholic prejudices. Succeeding in this, he advanced to the subjection of the Protestants in other parts of the kingdom. His whole career was distinguished by his hatred of Protestants, and his efforts to extirpate them from the dominions of France and the world.

Thus supported and encouraged by the powerful influence of the home governVOL. XI.-31

ment, the Jesuits in Canada renewed their diligence in establishing themselves among the surrounding tribes of Indians, many of whom embraced the faith and became zealous Catholics according to the strictest rules of the order. These all allied themselves to the French, and became the fast friends of the colony.

Their glowing prospects, however, were suddenly checked by adverse fortune. Charles I. of England, having entered into war with France, dispatched three vessels, under the command of Sir David Kerth, a French Calvinist, upon an expedition against Quebec. Sir David defeated the squadron sent to its relief, and, after reducing the colonists, compelled them to capitulate in the year 1629. But he treated the vanquished with so much humanity that the greater part of the settlers declined the privilege of being conveyed to old France, and remained under their conquerors in Canada. Charles, however, was not the prince, nor was England in a condition to turn this brief triumph of his arms in the New World to any permanent advantage to the British crown, and the colony was restored to France by the treaty of St. Germain in 1632.

Meantime the Jesuits, never disheartened by temporary reverses, continued to strengthen themselves among the Indian tribes, and to extend their missionary operations farther into the interior. While, on the one hand, their labors tended to forming a friendly alliance between the Indians and the colonists, on the other the influence they acquired with the former became troublesome to the latter in conducting the internal affairs of the colony. By this influence the Jesuits found themselves possessed of power to decide every matter of difference between the Indians and the colonists, as would best subserve their own interests and promote their ultimate designs. This power they exercised in various ways until it became a souree of contention and strife between the priests and the governors, which greatly interrupted the harmony and retarded the progress of the colony.

The worst annoyance experienced by the Jesuits arose from the hostile spirit of the Iroquois nations south of the lakes, toward the tribes among whom they had established themselves as missionaries. These nations greatly harassed those tribes

by a series of wars with them, in which they utterly destroyed some of them, and carried away many prisoners as captives to their own country. They were viewed also with jealousy and concern on account of their confederated strength, their contiguity to the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, and their supposed friendship for the settlers in that direction, and their power and manifest disposition to intercept the trade of the western and northwestern tribes with the French, and throw it into the hands of the Orange merchants on the Hudson.

The subjugation of these nations was now obviously the most important object to be accomplished, both to strengthen the colony by preserving to it the extensive fur-trade with the more western tribes, and to open the way for missionary establishments by the Jesuits among those at the west and the south. Thus mutually interested, the priests and the merchants were alike concerned to have the proud and turbulent Iroquois subdued. But the task was utterly hopeless by the ordinary methods of conquests over an enemy. This the colonists knew, and therefore did not hazard a rupture with them.

Not so with the Jesuits. They saw that the way to subdue was to convert them. Could they gain their confidence as missionaries of the Gospel of peace, they might control them as they should choose in their secular affairs. And to this object, after their manner, they addressed themselves.

In the emergency, a man fitted for the hazardous enterprise was not wanting. Father SIMON LE MOINE, of the order of Jesuits in Quebec, was that man.

those to whom he was going, inveterate enemies to the French and all the tribes who were in alliance with them. Such an adventure required the spirit of an apostle, and could not fail to command the admiration of all who witnessed it. The devoted father proceeded to Three Rivers, and thence to Montreal, where he was joined by a young man of courage and zeal similar to his own, who became his companion in the adventure upon which he had entered.

On the 17th of July, the festival of St. Alexis, another favorite saint, they proceeded up the St. Lawrence for a land unknown to them. On the 18th, says this missionary father, "following always the course of the River St. Lawrence, we met nothing but breakers and impetuous rapids all strewn with rocks and shoals."

The next day they found the river less obstructed by impediments; but they were greatly annoyed by swarms of musquitoes, and at night they were drenched by a copious rain, which continued till morning. They had no shelter from the storm except the trees of the forest; but endured their sufferings without complaining.

On the 20th and 21st they passed through groups of small islands in the river, and in the evening of the latter day broke their bark canoe, and had to spend the night, which was dark and rainy, upon the naked rocks. On the 22d they again encountered rapids in the river, which rendered it no longer navigable, and they were obliged to carry on their shoulders both their canoe and their baggage. Above these rapids they saw a herd of wild cows, which reminded them that they were far from the haunts of civilized man, and caused them to feel the more sensibly the wildness of their solitude.

In consequence of an injury received by their pilot they were detained a day or two, suffering much inconvenience from the ceaseless annoyance of the musquitoes, which they bore as patiently as they could. Whoever has since traveled in that country, and endured the assaults of these tormentors as they sometimes sally forth from the swamps and glens that skirt the shores of the St. Lawrence, know well that patience has few trials which more effectually test its moral power.