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Jogues had expected this result, and was prepared to meet it; but several of the principal Dutch settlers, and among them Van Curler, who had made the previous attempt to rescue him, urged that his death was certain, if he returned to the Indian town, and advised him to make his escape. In the Hudson, opposite the settlement, lay a small Dutch vessel nearly ready to sail.
There were on board about forty persons, including four Frenchmen, one of them being the Jesuit, Isaac Jogues, whom we have already followed on his missionary journey to the towns of the Tobacco Nation. In the interval he had not been idle. The Huron mission was in a state of destitution.
In November and December, they began their missionary excursions, for the Indians were now gathered in their settlements, and journeyed on foot through the denuded forests, in mud and snow, bearing on their backs the vessels and utensils necessary for the service of the altar. The new and perilous mission of the Tobacco Nation fell to Garnier and Jogues.
He was eventually given to an old woman who had lost a member of her family, but when she saw his maimed hands one split between the little finger and the ring-finger she sent him to the Dutch, who ransomed and sent him to France, whence he came back like Jogues, a year later.
In 1641 Fathers Raymbault and Jogues preached their Faith to a large concourse of Indians at the Sault between Huron and Superior, where, for the first time, they heard of the Sioux or Dacotah, those vagrants of the northwest, and where the former died without realising the hope he had cherished, of reaching China across the western wilderness.
Food was sent to him; but, as his host appropriated the larger part to himself, Jogues was nearly starved. There was a compartment of his garret, separated from the rest by a partition of boards. Here the old Dutchman, who, like many others of the settlers, carried on a trade with the Mohawks, kept a quantity of goods for that purpose; and hither he often brought his customers.
In the evening it was the eighteenth of October Jogues, smarting with his wounds and bruises, was sitting in one of the lodges, when an Indian entered, and asked him to a feast. To refuse would have been an offense. He arose and followed the savage, who led him to the lodge of the Bear chief.
I have made this rather extensive summary of the singular autobiography and largely in the author's own words not to prepare your minds for lenient judgments of his work, but to inform them of the tenacious purpose of the man whose infirmities of the knees kept him most of his life from the wild forest trails and streams and compelled him to a wheel-chair in gardens of tame roses; whose weakness of the eyes allowed him but inadequate vision of the splendor of the woods and even robbed him of the intimacy of books; whose malady of mind kept him ever in terror of devils more fierce than the inhuman tortures of Jogues and Brebeuf a tenacious purpose that wrought its youth-selected, self-appointed work, and so well, so splendidly, so thoroughly that it needs never to be done again.
He met the priest with both hands, and stood head and shoulders taller while they held each other like brothers. "I thought to find you in Montreal, Father Jogues, and not here, where in my dim fashion I could mistake you for the chaplain of the fort." "Monsieur Corlaer, I have not forgot one look of yours. I was a great trouble to you with, my wounds, and my hiding and fever.
To both Jogues and Couture it seemed that at last the time was ripe for an Iroquois mission the Mission of the Martyrs. Before saying farewell to the Mohawks Jogues left with his hosts, as a pledge that he would return, a locked box; and by the end of June he was back in Quebec to report the success of his journey. He then prepared to redeem his pledge to the Mohawks.
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