the Huron towns, now returned with tenfold violence, and with it soon
appeared a new and fearful scourge,--the small-pox. Terror was universal.
The contagion increased as autumn advanced; and when winter came, far
from ceasing, as the priests had hoped, its ravages were appalling.
The season of Huron festivity was turned to a season of mourning; and
such was the despondency and dismay, that suicide became frequent.
The Jesuits, singly or in pairs, journeyed in the depth of winter from
village to village, ministering to the sick, and seeking to commend their
religious teachings by their efforts to relieve bodily distress. Happily,
perhaps, for their patients, they had no medicine but a little senna.
A few raisins were left, however; and one or two of these, with a
spoonful of sweetened water, were always eagerly accepted by the
sufferers, who thought them endowed with some mysterious and sovereign
efficacy. No house was left unvisited. As the missionary, physician at
once to body and soul, entered one of these smoky dens, he saw the
inmates, their heads muffled in their robes of skins, seated around the
fires in silent dejection. Everywhere was heard the wail of sick and
dying children; and on or under the platforms at the sides of the house
crouched squalid men and women, in all the stages of the distemper.
The Father approached, made inquiries, spoke words of kindness,
administered his harmless remedies, or offered a bowl of broth made from
game brought in by the Frenchman who hunted for the mission. [ Game was
so scarce in the Huron country, that it was greatly prized as a luxury.
Le Mercier speaks of an Indian, sixty years of age, who walked twelve
miles to taste the wild-fowl killed by the French hunter. The ordinary
food was corn, beans, pumpkins, and fish. ] The body cared for, he next
addressed himself to the soul. "This life is short, and very miserable.
It matters little whether we live or die." The patient remained silent,
or grumbled his dissent. The Jesuit, after enlarging for a time, in
broken Huron, on the brevity and nothingness of mortal weal or woe,