current, pushing up their empty barks, or dragging them with ropes.
Brebeuf tried to do his part; but the boulders and sharp rocks wounded
his naked feet, and compelled him to desist. He and his companions bore
their share of the baggage across the portages, sometimes a distance of
several miles. Four trips, at the least, were required to convey the
whole. The way was through the dense forest, incumbered with rocks and
logs, tangled with roots and underbrush, damp with perpetual shade,
and redolent of decayed leaves and mouldering wood. [ 1 ] The Indians
themselves were often spent with fatigue. Brebeuf, a man of iron frame
and a nature unconquerably resolute, doubted if his strength would
sustain him to the journey's end. He complains that he had no moment to
read his breviary, except by the moonlight or the fire, when stretched
out to sleep on a bare rock by some savage cataract of the Ottawa,
or in a damp nook of the adjacent forest.

[ 1 "Adioustez a ces difficultez, qu'il faut coucher sur la terre nue,
ou sur quelque dure roche, faute de trouuer dix ou douze pieds de terre
en quarre pour placer vne chetiue cabane; qu'il faut sentir incessamment
la puanteur des Sauuages recreus, marcher dans les eaux, dans les fanges,
dans l'obscurite et l'embarras des forest, ou les piqueures d'vne
multitude infinie de mousquilles et cousins vous importunent fort."--
Brebeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1635, 25, 26. ]

All the Jesuits, as well as several of their countrymen who accompanied
them, suffered more or less at the hands of their ill-humored conductors.
[ 1 ] Davost's Indian robbed him of a part of his baggage, threw a part
into the river, including most of the books and writing-materials of the
three priests, and then left him behind, among the Algonquins of
Allumette Island. He found means to continue the journey, and at length
reached the Huron towns in a lamentable state of bodily prostration.