1639.

Noel Chabanel came later to the mission; for he did not reach the Huron
country until 1643. He detested the Indian life,--the smoke, the vermin,
the filthy food, the impossibility of privacy. He could not study by the
smoky lodge-fire, among the noisy crowd of men and squaws, with their
dogs, and their restless, screeching children. He had a natural
inaptitude to learning the language, and labored at it for five years
with scarcely a sign of progress. The Devil whispered a suggestion into
his ear: Let him procure his release from these barren and revolting
toils, and return to France, where congenial and useful employments
awaited him. Chabanel refused to listen; and when the temptation still
beset him, he bound himself by a solemn vow to remain in Canada to the
day of his death. [ Abrege de la Vie du Pere Noel Chabanel, MS. This
anonymous paper bears the signature of Ragueneau, in attestation of its
truth. See also Ragueneau, Relation, 1650, 17, 18. Chabanel's vow is
here given verbatim. ]

Isaac Jogues was of a character not unlike Garnier. Nature had given him
no especial force of intellect or constitutional energy, yet the man was
indomitable and irrepressible, as his history will show. We have but few
means of characterizing the remaining priests of the mission otherwise
than as their traits appear on the field of their labors. Theirs was no
faith of abstractions and generalities. For them, heaven was very near
to earth, touching and mingling with it at many points. On high, God the
Father sat enthroned: and, nearer to human sympathies, Divinity incarnate
in the Son, with the benign form of his immaculate mother, and her spouse,
St. Joseph, the chosen patron of New France. Interceding saints and
departed friends bore to the throne of grace the petitions of those yet
lingering in mortal bondage, and formed an ascending chain from earth to