devouring to represent its victims. On the top of a spruce-tree, near
their house at Ihonatiria, the priests had fastened a small streamer,
to show the direction of the wind. This, too, was taken for a charm,
throwing off disease and death to all quarters. The clock, once an
object of harmless wonder, now excited the wildest alarm; and the Jesuits
were forced to stop it, since, when it struck, it was supposed to sound
the signal of death. At sunset, one would have seen knots of Indians,
their faces dark with dejection and terror, listening to the measured
sounds which issued from within the neighboring house of the mission,
where, with bolted doors, the priests were singing litanies, mistaken for
incantations by the awe-struck savages.

Had the objects of these charges been Indians, their term of life would
have been very short. The blow of a hatchet, stealthily struck in the
dusky entrance of a lodge, would have promptly avenged the victims of
their sorcery, and delivered the country from peril. But the priests
inspired a strange awe. Nocturnal councils were held; their death was
decreed; and, as they walked their rounds, whispering groups of children
gazed after them as men doomed to die. But who should be the executioner?
They were reviled and upbraided. The Indian boys threw sticks at them as
they passed, and then ran behind the houses. When they entered one of
these pestiferous dens, this impish crew clambered on the roof, to pelt
them with snowballs through the smoke-holes. The old squaw who crouched
by the fire scowled on them with mingled anger and fear, and cried out,
"Begone! there are no sick ones here." The invalids wrapped their heads
in their blankets; and when the priest accosted some dejected warrior,
the savage looked gloomily on the ground, and answered not a word.

Yet nothing could divert the Jesuits from their ceaseless quest of dying
subjects for baptism, and above all of dying children. They penetrated