the sign of the cross. A war-party was going out against their enemies,
and he bethought him of telling them the story of the Cross and the
Emperor Constantine. This so wrought upon them that they all daubed the
figure of a cross on their shields of bull-hide, set out for the war, and
came back victorious, extolling the sacred symbol as a great war-medicine.

"Thus it is," writes Dablon, who chronicles the incident, "that our holy
faith is established among these people; and we have good hope that we
shall soon carry it to the famous river called the Mississippi, and
perhaps even to the South Sea." [Footnote: _Relation_, 1672, 42.] Most
things human have their phases of the ludicrous; and the heroism of these
untiring priests is no exception to the rule.

The various missionary stations were much alike. They consisted of a
chapel (commonly of logs) and one or more houses, with perhaps a
storehouse and a workshop,--the whole fenced with palisades, and forming,
in fact, a stockade fort, surrounded with clearings and cultivated fields.
It is evident that the priests had need of other hands than their own and
those of the few lay brothers attached to the mission. They required men
inured to labor, accustomed to the forest life, able to guide canoes and
handle tools and weapons. In the earlier epoch of the missions, when
enthusiasm was at its height, they were served in great measure by
volunteers, who joined them through devotion or penitence, and who were
known as _donnes_, or "given men." Of late, the number of these had much
diminished; and they now relied chiefly on hired men, or _engages_. These
were employed in building, hunting, fishing, clearing and tilling the
ground, guiding canoes, and if faith is to be placed in reports current
throughout the colony in trading with the Indians for the profit of the
missions. This charge of trading--which, if the results were applied
exclusively to the support of the missions, does not of necessity involve