water, which soon spoiled in the summer heat, caused him a
severe pain in the stomach. They gave him to eat as much as
was necessary, not to live, but not to die. God alone, and His
saints, were his company. The minister visited him some-
times, and bethinking himself one day to ask him how they
treated him, for never would this good Father have mentioned
it, if he had not been spoken to about the matter, he answered
that they brought him very few things. "I suspect as much,"
the minister answers, "for that old man is a great miser, who
no doubt retains most of the provisions that are sent to you."
The Father assured him that he was content, and that his
sufferings had long since been acceptable to him. In this
garret where the Father was, there was a recess to which his
guard continually led Hiroquois savages, in order to sell some
produce which he locked up there: this recess was made of
planks so slightly joined that one might easily have passed his
fingers into the openings. "I am astonished," says the
Father, "that those barbarians did not hundreds of times dis-
cover me; I saw them without difficulty; and unless God had
turned away their eyes, they would have perceived me a thou-
sand times. I concealed myself behind casks, bending myself
into a constrained posture which gave me gehenna and torture
two, three, or four hours in succession, and that very often.
To go down to the court of the dwelling, or to go to other
places, was casting myself headlong; for every place was
filled with those who were seeking me to death. Besides, to
increase my blessings--that is to say, my crosses--the wound
which a dog had inflicted upon me, the night that I escaped
from the Hiroquois, caused me so great a pain that, if the
surgeon of that settlement ¹ had not put his hand to it, I
should have lost not only the leg but life; for gangrene was
already setting in.

"The captain ² of the principal settlement, called Manate,
distant sixty leagues from the one where I was, having learned
that I was not overmuch at my ease in that vicinity of the
Hiroquois, or Maquois, as the Dutch name them, commanded
that I be taken to his fort. By good fortune, at the same time
when they received his letters a vessel was to go down, in which
they made me embark in company with a minister, who showed

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