tells us, "now in one place, now in another, sometimes on water,
sometimes on land," were often crude, or that they required careful
editing before being sent home to France for publication. In their
printed form, however, these _Rélations des Jésuites_ gained a wide
circle of European readers; they inspired more missionaries to come,
and they drew from well-to-do laymen large donations of money for
carrying on the crusade.

The royal authorities also gave their earnest support, for they saw
in the Jesuit missionary not merely a torchbearer of his faith or a
servant of the Church. They appreciated his loyalty and remembered
that he never forgot his King, nor shirked his duty to the cause of
France among the tribes. Every mission post thus became an embassy,
and every Jesuit an ambassador of his race, striving to strengthen the
bonds of friendship between the people to whom he went and the people
from whom he came. The French authorities at Quebec were not slow to
recognize what an ever-present help the Jesuit could be in times of
Indian trouble. One governor expressed the situation with fidelity
when he wrote to the home authorities that, "although the interests of
the Gospel do not require us to keep missionaries in all the Indian
villages, the interests of the civil government for the advantage of
trade must induce us to manage things so that we may always have at
least one of them there." It must therefore be admitted that, when the
civil authorities did encourage the missions, they did not always do
so with a purely spiritual motive in mind.

As the political and commercial agent of his people, the Jesuit had
great opportunities, and in this capacity he usually gave a full
measure of service. After he had gained the confidence of the tribes,
the missionary always succeeded in getting the first inkling of what