insects buzzing or crawling about them, in the midst of a chaos of
distractions, immersed in scenes of squalor and degradation, overcome by
fatigue and improper sustenance, suffering from wounds and disease, and
maltreated by their hosts who were often their jailers. What they wrote
under these circumstances is simple and direct. There is no florid
rhetoric; there is little self-glorification; no unnecessary dwelling on
the details of martyrdom; and there is not a line to give suspicion "that
one of this loyal band flinched or hesitated."

"I know not," says one of these apostles [Footnote: Fr. Francesco Giuseppe
Bressani, "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 39:55.] in an epistle to the
Romans (for this particular letter went to Rome), "I know not whether your
Paternity will recognize the letter of a poor cripple, who formerly, when
in perfect health was well known to you. The letter is badly written, and
quite soiled because in addition to other inconveniences, he who writes it
has only one whole finger on his right hand; and it is difficult to avoid
staining the paper with the blood which flows from his wounds, not yet
healed: he uses arquebus powder for ink, and the earth for a table." This
particular early American writer, besides having his hand split and now
one finger-nail or joint burned off and now another, his hair and beard
pulled out, his flesh burned with live coals and red-hot stones, was hung
up by the feet, had food for dogs placed upon his body that they might
lacerate him as they ate, but finally escaped death itself through sale to
the Dutch.

Two other chroniclers of that life of which they were a part, were two men
of noble birth: the giant Brebeuf, "the Ajax of the mission," a man of
vigorous passions tamed by religion (as Parkman says, "a dammed-up torrent
sluiced and guided to grind and saw and weave for the good of man"); and
in marked and strange contrast with him, Charles Garnier, a young man of