Chapter II (16)

Upon the accession of Gov. Dudley to office, in 1692, he solicited a conference with the Abnakis, and accordingly a conference was held on an island in Casco Bay. The object of the governor was to secure the neutrality of the Indians, in case the French and English went to war. Penhallow and such as follow him contend that the governor succeeded in his purpose, and secured a promise from the Indians not to join their allies, the French, in case of war. But treaties had been imposed upon those unlettered warriors which they never understood, and, consequently, never entered into. Besides, F. Rale, who had the advantage over Penhallow of having been present at the conference, gives quite a different statement of the affair. F. Rale, at the request of the Indians, accompanied them to the conference. "Thus," he relates himself, "I found myself where neither I nor the governor wished me to be." The governor and the missionary exchanged the usual civilities, and then the former, stepping back among his people, made his propositions to the Indians in an address, which he concluded with an offer to supply their wants, take their furs, and supply them with merchandise in return "at a moderate price." An English minister accompanied the governor, whose presence could have had no other object in view than a tender of his services to the Abnakis in lieu of those of F. Rale; but the latter supposes that his own presence disconcerted that portion of the plan. When the Indians retired to consult together, Gov. Dudley approached F. Rale, and said: "I beg you, sir, not to induce your Indians to make war upon us." "No, sir, my religion and my sacred calling require me to give them only counsels of peace," was the prompt and appropriate reply. The Indians soon returned and gave the following answer through their orator: "Great chief, you have told us not to unite with the Frenchman if you declare war against him. Know that the Frenchman is my brother; we have but the same Prayer, we dwell in the same cabin--he at one fire, I at the other. If I see you enter towards the fire where my brother, the Frenchman, is seated, I watch you from my mat at the other. If I see a tomahawk in your hand, I say, What will the Englishman do with that hatchet? and I would rise to see. If he raise it to strike my brother, I grasp mine, and rush upon him. Could I sit still and see my brother struck? No! no! I love my brother, the Frenchman, too well not to defend him. I therefore tell thee, great chief, do no harm to my brother, and I will do none to thee. Remain quiet on thy mat; I will remain so on mine." "Thus," says F. Rale, "the conference ended."

Peace was soon interrupted. War broke out between England and France in 1703, and involved their respective colonies on this continent in the contest. The Abnakis of Maine joined their French allies, and both sides felt the ravages of war to a fearful degree. The Indians, who had long been impatient under the encroaching policy of their white neighbors, carried on the war with destructive fury. Casco was taken, the New England villages, forts, and farms were pillaged, and six hundred of the inhabitants led away captives. As a minister of peace and mercy, F. Rale endeavored to subdue the wild passions of his injured and infuriated Indians, as has been seen above by the testimony of Gov. Lincoln; but the people of New England visited upon him all the blame for the calamities which their own wrong policy had occasioned.

Among the hostile movements of the English during the war was an expedition against Norridgewock, the residence of F. Rale. In the winter of 1705, "when the snow lay four feet deep," and "the country looked like a frozen field," Col. Hilton led an expedition of two hundred and seventy men against Norridgewock. The village, all deserted as it was by its inhabitants, was easily taken. The intended victim, however, was not there; for the missionary was absent with the tribe, as it was his habit to accompany them to the sea-shore. But the cabins and the chapel were there; the torch was applied, and soon one blaze enveloped the church and the village. When the missionary returned, he shuddered at the sacrilege he saw, and wept over the calamities of his people. A bark chapel soon rose from the ashes of the church which had been destroyed, and in it he dispensed the consolations of religion to his flock for several years.

During this year, F. Rale had the misfortune to sustain a fall of such violence as to break his right thigh and left leg, and in this condition he was compelled to make the painful journey to Quebec for surgical aid. The fractured parts were so imperfectly cemented together that he had to submit to the severe operation of having his leg broken again and reset. During his sufferings, not a groan escaped him; and the surgeon who attended him has expressed his wonder at such an exhibition of Christian patience and love of suffering. As soon as his wounds permitted him to return, he was again at his post in his little sanctuary in the wilderness, where, amid personal dangers the most appalling, he continued calmly and without fear the discharge of his sacred duties.

In the meantime, the English were determined to get rid of him, and the General Court of Massachusetts, in November, 1720, passed a resolution for that purpose. John Leighton, Sheriff of York, was commissioned to arrest him. If not found, he was to demand him of the Indians; upon their refusal, the Indians themselves were to be taken and carried to Boston. Every effort was made to induce the Indians to betray their pastor into the hands of his enemies, or at least to send him away from the country. They made many attempts to seize him by force or take him by surprise, and an offer of £1,000 was made for his head. Such was their horror of Jesuit sorcery! "I should be too happy," says the object of their hatred, "were I to become their victim, or did God deem me worthy to be loaded with chains, and shed my blood for the salvation of my dear Indians." This was said in no spirit of bravado or vain display; for the sequel will show how firmly, yet how meekly, he laid down his life for his altar and his flock.

In the midst of the wars that desolated the country, it was his mild spirit and humane counsels that served to moderate the natural ferocity of the Indian character. Instead of urging the infliction of cruelty upon those who had so long sought his life, he endeavored to secure for his enemies every mildness consistent with the laws of war. "I exhorted them," says F. Rale, "to maintain the same interest in their religion as if they were at home; to observe carefully the laws of war; to practise no cruelty; to kill no one except in the heat of battle; and to treat the prisoners humanely." His solicitude for peace during the period of which we have been speaking, at the very moment that his enemies accused him as an instigator of mischief, and his kind sentiments towards them, may be seen from the following letter addressed to the authorities at Boston:

NARRANTSOAK, Nov. 18, 1712.

SIR: The Governor-General of Canada advises me by a letter, which
reached here some days ago, that the last royal vessel, arrived at
Quebec Sept. 30, announces that peace is not yet concluded between
the two crowns of France and England; that, however, it was much
talked of. Such are his words.

Other letters, which I have received, inform me that the Intendant,
just come out in that vessel, says that when on the point of
embarking at Rochelle, a letter was received from M. de Tallard,
assuring them that peace was made, and would be published in the
latter part of October.

Now, this cannot be known in Canada, but you may know it at Boston,
where vessels come at all seasons. If you know anything, I beseech
you to let me know, that I may send instantly to Quebec, over the
ice, to inform the Governor-General, so that he may prevent the
Indians from any act of hostility. I am, sir, perfectly your very
humble and obedient servant,

SEB. RALE, S.J.[170]

At length the tidings of the peace of Utrecht, 30th March, 1713, arrived, and restored quiet to New France and New England. Gov. Dudley called the Indians together in conference at Portsmouth in July, 1713, and announced to them that peace had been made, and proposed to them: "If you are willing, you and we will live in peace." He then informed them that the French had ceded Placentia and Port Royal to the English. The Indians, through their orator, replied that they had taken up the hatchet because their allies, the French, had taken it up, and they were willing now to cast it away, since the French had laid it down, and to live in peace. Then the orator added: "But you say that the Frenchman has given you Placentia and Port Royal, which is in my neighborhood, with all the land adjacent. He may give you what he pleases. As for me, I have my land, which the Great Spirit has given me to live upon. While there shall be one child of my nation upon it, he will fight to keep it." Penhallow gives a somewhat different account of this conference; but that of F. Rale is more in keeping with the previous history of the Indians, and more consonant with their character. If they acknowledged themselves subjects of Great Britain, they knew no better in this than in previous similar instances what they were doing, for they understood not the language attributed to them.

It may be judged how welcome peace must have been to F. Rale from the alacrity with which he availed himself of it to attend to the religious interests of his people. To rebuild his church was the first object of his solicitude. As Boston was so much nearer than Quebec, the chiefs sent deputies to the former place, in order to procure workmen for rebuilding the church, for whose services they offered to pay liberally. The governor gave them a most friendly reception, and, to their astonishment, offered to rebuild their church at his own expense, "since the French governor had abandoned them." Their astonishment, however, was soon changed into indignation when they heard the condition annexed to this apparently generous offer, which was that they should dismiss their own pastor, and receive in his place an English minister. "When you first came here," replied the indignant deputies by their orator, "you saw me a long time before the French governors, but neither your predecessors nor your ministers ever spoke to me of Prayer or of the Great Spirit. They saw my furs, my beaver and moose skins, and of these alone they thought; these alone they sought, and so eagerly that I have not been able to supply them enough. When I had much, they were my friends; but only then. One day my canoe missed the route; I lost my way, and wandered a long time at random, until at last I landed near Quebec, in a great village of the Algonquins,[171] where the Black Gowns were teaching. Scarcely had I arrived, when one of them came to see me. I was loaded with furs, but the Black Gown of France disdained to look at them. He spoke to me of the Great Spirit, of heaven, of hell, of the Prayer, which is the only way to reach heaven. I heard him with joy, and was so pleased with his words that I remained in the village to hear him. At last the Prayer pleased me, and I asked to be instructed. I solicited baptism, and received it. Then I returned to the lodges of my tribe, and related all that had happened. All envied my happiness, and wished to partake of it. They, too, went to the Black Gown to be baptized. Thus have the French acted. Had you spoken to me of the Prayer as soon as we met, I should now be so unhappy as to pray like you; for I could not have told whether your Prayer was good or bad. Now I hold to the Prayer of the French; I agree to it; I shall be faithful to it, even until the earth is burnt and destroyed. Keep your men, your gold, and your minister. I will go to my French father."

The required aid was obtained from the French governor; workmen were sent from Quebec, and the church was built soon after the peace. "It possesses a beauty," says the missionary, "which would cause it to be admired even in Europe, and nothing has been spared to adorn it." Subsequently two little chapels were erected, about three hundred paces from the chapel, by workmen obtained probably from Boston; and these chapels are probably what Hutchinson in 1724 alludes to as having been "built a few years before by carpenters from New England." One of them was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, the other to their guardian angel. There, in his new church and chapels, with the aid of rich vestments and sacred vessels given by some of his friends, and with the seraphic music of forty innocent Indian boys, all dressed in cassocks and surplices, F. Rale conducted the solemn offices of the church in the wilderness with a splendor and beauty not unworthy of more favored lands. The processions on Corpus Christi were quite unique and beautiful. On these occasions the church and chapels were ornamented with the trinkets and fine work of the squaws, and burning tapers made by the Indians from the wax berries growing on their own native shores, and were thronged with ardent and sincere worshippers--the simple children of the forest gathering around the Holy of Holies, and presenting a scene in which angels themselves might love to mingle.

The following account of F. Rale's daily life cannot but prove interesting: "He rose at four, and, after meditation, said Mass at daybreak, which all the Indians heard, and during it chanted their prayers aloud; at its close he generally, on week-days, made a short exhortation, to inspire them with good thoughts, then dismissing them to the labors of the day. He then began to catechise the children and the young; the aged, too, were there, all answering with the docility of children. Then, after a slight meal, he sat in his chamber to despatch the various matters laid before him--their plans, their troubles, domestic disquiets, or intended marriages--in a word, to direct them all. Towards noon he would go to work in his garden, and then split his wood to cook his little mess of hominy; for this may be said to have been his only food. Wine he never tasted, even when among the French.

"After this frugal repast, he visited the sick, and went to particular cabins to give instruction where it was more needed; and if a public council or feast was to take place, he must be present; for they never proceeded to the one without first hearing his advice, nor to the other without his blessing on the food, which was ready to be placed on the bark plates, which each one brought, and with which he immediately retired to his cabin.

"The evening was left him to say his Breviary and give some time to prayer and reading; but this was so often intrenched upon that at last he made it a rule never to speak from before evening prayer till after Mass on the following day, unless he was called to a sick-bed."[172]

In the course of a few years, the free spirit of the Indians began to grow impatient under the encroachments of the whites. Not only their hunting-grounds, but even their fields for cultivation, were circumscribed. A conference with Gov. Shute was held at Georgetown in August, 1717, but it was evident that redress for the Indians formed no part of the governor's designs. He refused to treat with them otherwise than as subjects; he would not acknowledge their natural liberty nor their hereditary title to their hunting-grounds; nor would he fix a boundary beyond which the encroachments of the white men should not extend. They were told, however, that the English wished them to become of one religion with themselves; an English Bible was given to them, and the governor told them that the Rev. Mr. Baxter, who accompanied him, would become their teacher and pastor. Thus it seems that the governor with one hand presented them a Bible, and with the other grasped their lands. When a letter from F. Rale, pleading in behalf of his children, was handed to the governor, he treated it with great contempt. "He let them know," says Hutchinson, "that he highly resented the insolence of the Jesuit."[173] Another mock treaty was now entered into by the aid of interpreters. F. Rale always protested against it as fraudulent, and announced to the New Englanders that the Norridgewocks did not recognize it. He never ceased his paternal efforts in behalf of his Indians, and repeatedly addressed letters to the governor and other leading men of New England, demanding justice for them.[174]

Having tried every means of gaining over the Indians to their cause in vain, the New Englanders next attacked them in the point which seemed to attach them more than any other to the French; this was their religion. The Rev. Mr. Baxter, a minister of ability and education, as well as of an ardent zeal against Popery, undertook to evangelize the Abnakis. "Thus," says Bancroft, "Calvin and Loyola met in the woods of Maine." The Protestant minister established at Georgetown a school, which was supported by the government, and, by means of every attraction and inducement which he could present to them, endeavored first to gain the children. But their hearts had already been too deeply impressed with religion by the Catholic missionaries to receive the Prayer from any person other than the Black Gown. He then endeavored, but with the same result, to gain his point by addresses and harangues to the parents, the chiefs, and braves of the tribe. "He next assailed the religion of the Indians. He put various questions concerning their faith, and, as they answered, he turned into ridicule the sacraments, purgatory, the invocation of saints, beads, Masses, images, and the other parts of the Catholic creed and ritual."[175]

F. Rale saw at once that he must meet the danger thus threatened to the faith of his flock. He addressed a respectful letter to Mr. Baxter, covering an essay of one hundred pages, in which he undertook to defend and prove, "by Scripture, by tradition, and by theological arguments," those tenets and practices of the Catholic Church which the minister had endeavored to ridicule. In the letter enclosing the essay he remarked that the Indians knew how to believe, but not how to dispute, and the missionary felt it to be his duty to take up the controversy in behalf of his neophytes. Mr. Baxter's reply treated F. Rale's arguments as puerile and ridiculous. Finding, however, that his mission was a fruitless one, Mr. Baxter returned to Boston. The correspondence did not cease here; but, after Mr. Baxter's return to Boston, the letters turned upon the purity of their Latinity, rather than the theology of the respective controversialists. F. Rale remained at his post, the faithful guardian of his flock.

The grievances of which the Indians had been long complaining still remained unredressed. In 1719 another conference was held, but with no better result than the previous one at Georgetown. Fresh causes of resentment were added. Some Indians entered an English house to trade, when suddenly they found themselves surrounded by a force ten times stronger than their own. When about to cut their way through, their arms were arrested by a request on the part of the English for a parley, and they were told that the English only wished to invite some of their number to visit the governor at Boston. Four chiefs consented to go, and, when they arrived, they were detained as hostages, to secure the payment of a large ransom demanded by the English for damages sustained by them from depredations committed by the tribe. The prisoners appealed to their countrymen for relief, and the ransom was accordingly paid; but even then the English refused to release them. A conference was invited by the governor, but this was done merely to prevent an immediate rupture. At the designated time, July, 1721, the chiefs, accompanied by F. Rale; La Chasse, the superior of the missions; Croisel, and the young Castine, repaired to Georgetown, but the governor did not meet them there. La Chasse then drew up a letter in Indian, French, and English, setting forth the claims of the Indians, and sent it to Gov. Shute. No notice was ever taken of it.

In December, 1721, the English seized the young Castine, son of the Baron de Castine by an Indian wife, and a great favorite with the Abnakis. "The ungenerous and unjust arrest of this young man," says Dr. Francis, "incensed to the highest degree the countrymen of his mother, among whom he had always lived."

Still, the Indians refrained from retaliation. Another act of aggression soon followed; a detachment of two hundred and thirty men, towards the end of 1721, or early in 1722, were sent to seize the Catholic missionary. As this party entered the Kennebec, two young braves, hunting near the shore, saw them, and, after following them for some distance unobserved, struck into the woods and gave the alarm at Norridgewock, which was then nearly deserted. Scarcely had F. Rale time to consume the consecrated host on the altar to save it from sacrilege, and secure the sacred vessels. He fled precipitately to the woods, impeded as he was by the painful condition of the wounds received in the severe fall he had received as related above. The English arrived in the evening, and, having waited till morning, pursued him to the woods. They carefully scoured every place, and at one time came within eight steps of their intended victim, and yet passed away without seeing him, though only half concealed behind a small tree. The pursuers then returned disappointed to Norridgewock, where they pillaged the house of God and the missionary's residence, and then retired, carrying away with them everything belonging to F. Rale--his desk, papers, inkstand, and the Abnaki _Dictionary_, which he had commenced at St. Francis in 1691. He suffered the extremes of hunger while thus in the woods, flying from the pursuit of his enemies; yet his courage and resolution remained firm and cheerful. So great were the dangers that threatened him at every moment that his affectionate neophytes, and even his superior, advised him to retire for the present to Quebec. He always answered: "God has committed this flock to my care, and I will share its lot, being too happy, if permitted, to sacrifice my life for it." In a letter to his nephew he asks: "What will become of the flock, if it be deprived of its shepherd? I do not in the least fear the threats of those who hate me without cause. 'I count not my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course with joy,' and the ministry I have received of the Lord Jesus."

While thus the object of deadly pursuit on the part of the English colonists, F. Rale enjoyed the purest consolation in the love and affection of his devoted flock. On one occasion, while he was accompanying them on a hunting party, they suddenly perceived that he was missing, and the report was started that the English had broken into his cabin and carried him off. Their grief was only equalled by their fury, and at once the braves began to prepare for an effort to rescue their pastor at the hazard of their lives. Two of their number, however, afterwards went to his cabin, and there they found him, writing the life of a saint in their own language. Transported with joy, they exclaimed: "We were told that the English had carried you off, and our warriors were going to attack the fort, where we thought they had doubtlessly imprisoned you!" "You see, my children," replied the father, "that your fears were unfounded; but your affectionate care of me fills my heart with joy; it shows you love the Prayer." But as some of the warriors were starting, he added: "Set out, immediately after Mass, to overtake the others, and undeceive them."

On another occasion he was with them at a great distance from home, when the alarm was given that the English were within a few hours' march of the encampment. All insisted on his flying back to the village. At daybreak he started with two Indians as his escort. The journey was long, the provisions were out, and the father had for his only food a species of wood, which he softened by boiling. In crossing a lake, which had begun to thaw, he narrowly escaped being drowned himself in his effort to assist another. Saved from this danger, he was not the less exposed to death from cold. On the following day they crossed the river on broken pieces of ice, and were soon at the village. He was welcomed back by a sumptuous feast, consisting of corn and bear's meat; and when he expressed his astonishment and thanks for such a banquet, the Indians replied: "What, father! you have been fasting for two days; can we do less? Oh! would to God we could always regale you so!" But while he was thus feasting, his children elsewhere were mourning over his supposed death. His deserted cabin on the shore led some, who knew nothing of his flight, to believe that he had been killed. One of these erected a stake on the banks of a river, and to it attached a piece of paper-birch bark, on which he had drawn with charcoal a picture of some English surrounding F. Rale, and one was represented cutting off the Black Gown's head. When the main body of the Indians came that way, and saw the pictorial writing, its meaning sank deep into their hearts, and they were overwhelmed with grief. They tore out the long scalp-locks from their heads, and then sat on the ground around the stake, where they remained motionless and without uttering a word till the next day. Such was their mode of manifesting the most intense grief. But what must have been their joy, when, on returning to the village, they saw their beloved father reciting his Office on the banks of the river!

It would appear, from a letter in the _Massachusetts Historical Collections_, attributed to F. Rale, that he accompanied the expedition that destroyed Berwick. It is quite evident, from what has been related of the determination of the English to destroy him, and of the repeated efforts they made to accomplish that deadly purpose, that F. Rale would not have been safe at Norridgewock or anywhere apart from the main body of his people. It is not likely that his devoted children, who saw his danger, and were solicitous for his safety, would permit him to remain behind, exposed to the constant attempts of his enemies upon his life. His presence in the expedition against Berwick was enough, with his enemies, to confirm their charge that he led them on to war against the English. The truth is, their own pursuit of him rendered his presence there justifiable, as necessary for his own safety, if it were not justifiable on the ground that he was their chaplain in war as in peace, and that his presence among them was more necessary for the religious consolation of the dying, as well as for moderating, by the counsels we have already seen him giving them, the usual cruelties of war. It does not become his accusers, however, to dwell upon this charge, who themselves have boasted of the warlike feats of the Rev. Mr. Fry, who scalped and killed his Indian in Lovell's expedition, and was killed fighting in the thickest of the engagement.

It has already been seen how the Indians were, by repeated injuries, driven at last to take up the hatchet. When once at war, they prosecuted it with terrible energy and destructive fury. And though their humanity on several occasions contrasted with the cruelty of their civilized antagonists, the young settlements of New England suffered much at their hands during this contest.

In the summer of 1724, hostilities on the part of the Indians had begun to moderate, and peace was already spoken of between the respective parties. But this did not restrain the fury of the English. On the 23d of August an expedition of little over two hundred, consisting of English and their Mohawk allies, rushed suddenly from the thickets upon the unconscious village of Norridgewock. The first notice the Indians received was the rattling of the volleys of their assailants among their bark cabins. Consternation seized upon the inhabitants; the women and children fled, but the few braves who were then at the village rushed to arms to defend their altar and their homes. The struggle was indeed a desperate one. F. Rale, when he perceived the cause of the excitement in the village, knew that himself was the chief object of the enemy's pursuit. Hoping, too, to draw off the fury of the assailants from his neophytes upon himself, he went forth. No sooner had he reached the Mission Cross, where the fight was raging, than a shout of exultation arose from two hundred hostile voices, and, though a non-combatant, a discharge of musketry was immediately levelled at his venerable form. Pierced with balls, he fell lifeless at the foot of the cross. Seven principal chiefs lay dead around their saintly pastor and devoted father. The battle was now over, but the victory seemed too easy for the victors; they approached to wreak further vengeance upon the lifeless form of F. Rale. They hacked and mutilated the corpse, split open the head, broke the legs, and otherwise brutally disfigured it. Then proceeding to the house of God, the assailants rifled the altar, desecrated the sacred vessels and the adorable Host, and then committed the church to the devouring flames. After the English had retired, some of the orphaned flock of Norridgewock returned to their desolated home; they first sought for the body of their good father, and, having found it, they piously interred it beneath the spot where the altar stood.

After reading the incidents of the life of F. Rale, the reader would be astonished to peruse the accounts given by New England writers. But the latter bear on their face the evidence that they were the result, not of candid investigation, but of the bitterest partisan prejudice. There may be some explanation of their tone, though no voucher for their accuracy, in the fact that Penhallow derived his accounts from interpreters, who were known not to be faithful. Charlevoix and De la Chasse knew F. Rale personally, and they give us the strongest assurances of his innocence, his sanctity, and his many heroic virtues. M. de Bellemont, Superior of the Sulpician Seminary at Montreal, entertained so exalted an opinion of his merits that he did not hesitate to apply to him the words of S. Augustine: "Injuriam facit martyri, qui orat pro eo."

The accounts hostile to F. Rale have been derived chiefly from Penhallow, who was actuated by the strongest party feeling. A single specimen from his pen will show how he felt towards the person, as well as the religion, of F. Rale; it contains a repetition of the old calumny about the merit of destroying heretics, which no educated person would in our day repeat: "We scalped twenty-six besides M. Rale, the Jesuit, a most bloody incendiary, and instrumental to most of the mischiefs done us by preaching up the doctrine of meriting salvation by the destruction of heretics. He even made the offices of devotion serve as incentives to their ferocity, and kept a flag on which was depicted a cross surrounded by bows and arrows, which he used to hoist on a pole at the door of his church when he gave them absolution previous to their engaging in any warlike enterprise." Now, the flag that awakened so much horror in the breast of the New England chronicler was a simple Indian Sunday-school banner, than which nothing could have been more innocent. F. Rale, artist as well as priest, had decorated his Indian church with pious paintings executed by himself, to excite the piety and zeal of his neophytes. Amongst other similar representations, suitable for pleasing the simple tastes of the natives, was the flag in question, ornamented with the cross and the arrow, emblems of the faith and of the country. A glance would have convinced any passer-by that it was the banner of an Indian church, and no sensible person in our day could object to see such an one used by the Indians of Florida, Oregon, or other hostile Indian country within our territory or bordering on our frontier.

Dr. Francis, who in his life of Rale follows by preference the New England accounts, sums up his estimate of our missionary's character as follows: "But whatever abatements from indiscriminate praise his faults or frailties may require, I cannot review his history without receiving a deep impression that he was a pious, devoted, and extraordinary man. Here was a scholar, nurtured amid European learning, and accustomed to the refinements of one of the most intellectual nations of the Old World, who banished himself from the pleasures of home and from the attractions of his native land, and passed thirty-five years of his life in the forests of an unbroken wilderness, on a distant shore, amidst the squalid rudeness of savage life, and with no companions during those long years but the wild men of the woods. With them he lived as a friend, as a benefactor, as a brother; sharing their coarse fare, their disgusting modes of life, their perils, their exposures under the stern inclemency of a hard climate; always holding his life cheap in the toil of duty, and at last yielding himself a victim to dangers which he disdained to escape. And all this that he might gather these rude men, as he believed, into the fold of the church; that he might bring them to what he sincerely held to be the truth of God and the light of heaven."

Mr. Bancroft thus describes the life and character of the subject of this memoir: "At Norridgewock, on the banks of the Kennebec, the venerable Sebastian Rale, for more than a quarter of a century the companion and instructor of savages, had gathered a flourishing village round a church, which, rising in the desert, made some pretensions to magnificence. Severely ascetic--using no wine, and little food except pounded maize, a rigorous observer of the days of Lent--he built his own cabin, tilled his own garden, drew for himself wood and water, prepared his own hominy, and, distributing all that he received, gave an example of religious poverty. And yet he was laborious in garnishing up his forest sanctuary, believing the faith of the savage must be quickened by striking appeals to the senses. Himself a painter, he adorned the humble walls of his church with pictures. There he gave instruction almost daily. Following his pupils to their wigwams, he tempered the spirit of devotion with familiar conversation and innocent gaiety, winning the mastery over their souls by his powers of persuasion. He had trained a little band of forty young savages, arrayed in cassock and surplice, to assist in the service and chant the hymns of the church; and their public processions attracted a great concourse of red men. Two chapels were built near the village, one dedicated to the Virgin and adorned with her statue in relief, another to the guardian angel; and before them the hunter muttered his prayer on his way to the river or the woods. When the tribe descended to the seaside in the season of wild fowl, they were followed by Rale; and on some islet a little chapel of bark was quickly consecrated."

The scene so peaceful, so happy, so beautiful, in the days of F. Rale, that it has been appropriately called one of "nature's sweet retirements," is described by the poet Whittier after the rude hand of war had blasted its beauty and destroyed its altar and its priest, as it appeared to some Indian warriors who revisited the field after the battle, in the following lines:

"No wigwam smoke is curling there,
The very earth is scorched and bare;
And they pause and listen to catch a sound
Of breathing life, but there comes not one,
Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound;
And here and there on the blackened ground
White bones are glistening in the sun.
And where the house of prayer arose,
And the holy hymn at daylight's close,
And the aged priest stood up to bless
The children of the wilderness,
There is naught but ashes sodden and dank,
And the birchen boats of the Norridgewock,
Tethered to tree, and stump, and rock,
Rotting along the river-bank!"

FOOTNOTES:

[165] Indian name Kanghéssanak; botanical, Umbilicaria Muhlenbergii.

[166] Francis' _Life of Rale_, in Sparks.

[167] _Maine Hist. Soc. Collections_, v. i. p. 339, and _Shea_.

[168] Francis' _Life of Father Rale_.

[169] Smith's _History of New York_.

[170] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections_, v. viii. p. 258.

[171] _Sillery._

[172] _Shea._

[173] Francis's _Life of Rale_.

[174] _Chalmers._

[175] Francis's _Life of Rale_.

FROM EGYPT TO CHANAAN.

My God, while journeying to Chanaan's land,
For peace I do not pray;
Nor seek beneath thy sheltering sweetness, Lord,
To rest each circling day.
I cry to thee for strength to struggle on,
But do not ask that smooth the way may be;
Sufficient for thy servant 'tis to know
That earth's bleak desert ends at last with thee.

When heavenly sweetness floods my heart, dear Lord,
I magnify thy name;
When desolations weigh my spirit down,
I bless thee still the same.
Keep me, O God! I cry with streaming eyes,
From love of earth and creatures ever free:
Far sweeter are than Eden's fairest blooms
The blood-stained blossoms of Gethsemani.

I do not ask of thee that loving friends
Should wander by my side,
Or that my hand should feel an angel's touch,
A guardian and a guide.
But, Israel's God, do thou go on before,
An ever-present beacon in the way;
A fiery pillar in dark sorrow's night,
A cloudy column in my prosperous day.

I do not ask, O Master dear! to lean
My head upon thy breast;
Nor seek within thy circling arms to find
An ever-present rest.
I beg from thee that crown of prickly thorn
That once thy sacred forehead rudely tore;
And I will press those crimsoned brambles close
To my poor heart, and ask from thee no more.

But when, at length, my scorched and weary feet
Shall reach their journey's end,
And I have gained the longed-for promised land
Where milk and honey blend;
Then give me rest, and food, and drink, dear Lord;
For then another pilgrim will have past,
As thou didst, o'er the wastes of barren sand
From Egypt into Chanaan, safe at last.

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1873.

Will a new year ever dawn? is the question that must present itself in some shape or form to the one who glances at the records of the years as they go by. Eighteen hundred and seventy-three of them have passed since that song was heard at midnight on the mountains of Judea, "Glory in the highest, and on earth peace"; yet to-day the chant is as new and strange as it then was. There is no pagan Rome, but there is a Christian Germany; the dead ashes of the divine Emperor Tiberius were long ago blown about the world, but the divine Emperor William lives; there is no Herod, but there is an Emanuel, whose name is as characteristic of the man as the word _Eumenides_ of what it was intended to represent. Who shall say that there are no Pilates still, who would fain wash their minds of conviction and their hands of the blood of Christ with a little water? Are none living who cast lots for his seamless garment? Every person, everything existing at the birth and death of Christ, has its living counterpart to-day; which is to say that human nature is still human nature; that the last chapter of the world's history has not yet been written; and that, beautiful and sublime as parts of it may be, "the trail of the serpent is over it all."

The year now closing is bigger with portent than event, as far, at least, as events touch humanity at large. A glance at the principal states of the world, east as well as west, though with a drowsier movement in the Orient, will bring before the eye many of the same symptoms throughout; more or less of transition, of rapid and often violent national change, which naturally shows itself among peoples of a thousand creeds in the relation of the governed to the governing, of the individual to the state. On this subject there are two extremes--personal absolutism, on the one hand, and communism, on the other. Both are equally disastrous to humanity, both are opposed to the law of Christ; hence the believer in the law of Christ, the individual who founds and builds his life and that of his family on the law of Christ--the Christian, the Catholic--is equally objectionable to both, and alike an object of hatred to Prussian imperialism and French liberalism. We are living in dangerous times; the world seems at the crisis of a fever. God in his mercy grant that it pass safely, and that the patient awake from the long delirium to its senses and the road to recovery, however slow and toilsome!

In American history the year of our Lord 1873 will probably be known as, thus far at least, pre-eminently the year of scandals. Early in this year, the Congress of the United States, as if in emulation of the example set by some of our state legislatures and municipal corporations, did, in the now famous Crédit Mobilier transaction, furnish a chapter apart in the annals of political malfeasance and corruption. It shocked and shook the confidence of the nation. The out-going Vice-President escaped impeachment by a vote so narrow as to imply a conviction of his guilt; his successor entered with the shadow of the same offence on his character. The rank-and-file were worthy of their leaders. Men stared blankly in each other's faces, and asked whether such a thing as honor existed in political life. The result showed itself in general apathy at the elections, while the tide, such as it was, turned again to the opposite party.

Corruption, fraud, embezzlement--embezzlement, corruption, fraud! Such are the chief headlines which the future historian will find in the national annals during this year of grace. The same story is as true of private individuals as of our public and representative men. The fashionable crimes of the year--always after murder and suicide, of course--have been embezzlement and defalcation on the part of gentlemanly and well-educated bank and insurance officers. A batch of American citizens gave us a world-wide celebrity by their long trial, ending in conviction and severe punishment, for astounding forgeries on the Bank of England; so that it is doubtful, as matters stand, which epithet would convey the severest imputation on character--"As honest as a cashier," or "As honest as a member of Congress."

The early spring was signalized by, perhaps, one of the last efforts of the Indians against the whites. A small band of Modocs, under the leadership of their chieftain, "Captain Jack," who seemed to have had serious causes of complaint, after considerable negotiation, resolved to die in harness rather than wait for what, to them, was a lingering death on a narrow reservation. They commenced operations by treacherously murdering Gen. Canby, a brave officer, and a peace commissioner, during a peace parley. Retiring to their caves, which afforded them an admirable shelter, they for a long time maintained a successful resistance to the United States forces despatched to destroy them, inflicting severe loss on the troops. So successful was Captain Jack's battle that at one time it was feared the other tribes would rise and join him. Run to earth at last, he surrendered with one or two companions who remained faithful. After due trial, they were taken and hanged. A poor issue for a Christian government!

Troubles loomed in Louisiana. Faction contended with faction for the government at a sacrifice of many lives. When blood once flows in civil strife, it is hard to tell where or when it will stop. As civil war threatened, and as Congress was not sitting, President Grant was compelled to resort to the expedient of ordering in the United States troops, not only to preserve the peace, but to sustain one of the parties in power. The country looked with a natural jealousy on this, at the time, apparently necessary movement; for if all civil quarrels are to be decided by federal bayonets, centralization and consequent personal government must sooner or later ensue. At the same time, it is impossible to allow local contests to be fought out _vi et armis_. If the states cannot conduct their internal affairs in a civil fashion and in the spirit of the constitution, there is apparently no medium between centralization and disruption.

The South was making rapid strides towards commercial recovery; the cotton crop for the year was excellent, as, indeed, were the crops generally; but the recent financial disasters have crippled trade as well as commerce. People will neither buy nor sell. Stock lies idle in the market; large business firms close or suspend, and the farmers cannot forward their products; so that the country is faced by a long winter with nothing to do, aggravated by a bad business season, for which the strikers of the preceding year have themselves partially to blame; and all ostensibly because one large banking firm suspended payment!

The only remedy for everything is a restoration of confidence among all; but that is the precise thing that is slow to come. The money market has been in the hands of commercial gamblers and tricksters so long that, with our paper money, which in itself is demoralizing, commercial gambling seems to be the acknowledged and legitimate line of business. Honest men cannot contend with a world of rogues. American credit has suffered terribly. If in political affairs it be true, as Prince Bismarck assured the world no later than last March, that "confidence is a tender plant, which, once destroyed, comes never more," it is doubly true in matters affecting a man's pocket.

There is something ominous as well as startling in this sudden collapse of all business, all commercial transactions, in a young, wealthy, powerful country such as this, in consequence of the failure of one or two men. It could not be unless the roots of the evil that wrought their failure had taken wide and deep hold of the national heart. There are dangers more immediate and more fatal than Cæsars or centralization threatening our republic. There is something like a rotting away of the national virtue, purity, and honor which in themselves constitute the life of a nation. When we find dishonesty accepted as a fact, or a state of affairs rather, against which it is hopeless to contend; when we find money accepted as the lever which Archimedes sought in vain, and that money itself based on nothing--paper--taken on trust, which does not exist, we have arrived at a state very nearly approaching to national decay, and it is high time to look to our salvation. This can be brought about only by an adherence to the doctrines of Christianity, an education of our children in the laws of Christianity, so as to save at least the coming generation. Only one thought will save a nation from dishonesty: the consciousness that a dishonest action is a sin and a crime against Almighty God. When that doctrine is taught and enforced in our public schools, and impressed indelibly on the plastic mind of innocence, the generation will grow up honest, true, and manly. While perfectly aware that reasoning of this kind will scarcely be appreciated "on the street," nay, would not even be understood, that is no reason why prominence should not be given it by those who have the future of their country at heart. The generation that grows up without a Christian education will not know the meaning of such words as private or commercial morality.

The history of the year in Europe is told in a sentence written long before Rome was founded: "The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord and against his Christ." In Germany, the work of the construction and consolidation of the new empire is advancing bravely. The new German Empire is founded on a military code strengthened by penal statutes, executed with all the promptness, vigor, and rigor of military law. The great feature of the year has been the passing of the ecclesiastical bills, into the particulars of which question it is unnecessary to enter now, as it has already been dealt with at length in THE CATHOLIC WORLD.[176] The present aspect of affairs may be summed up in a sentence: To be a Catholic is to be a criminal in the eyes of the state.

Every Catholic society of men, and women even, living in community together, have been expelled from Prussian territory within the year, for the simple reason that they were Catholics. As an excuse in the eyes of this keen, honest, liberal world of the XIXth century for such an outrage on human liberty, the government which boasts as its head Prince Bismarck, whose very name has become a byword for sagacity and foresight, contents itself with no better reason than that these quiet men and women, whose lives are passed out of the world, are a danger to the nation that conquered Austria and France; and the keen, honest, liberal world finds that reasoning sufficient. To be logical, the government should expel all the 8,000,000 Catholics in Prussia, or the 14,000,000 in the Empire, who are left behind; for there is not one shade of difference in the Catholicity of the societies expelled and that of the vast body remaining. But as it would be a difficult undertaking bodily to expel 14,000,000 of human beings from an empire, and as it would be a costly proceeding in the end, the half a dozen or more men who legislate for this vast empire of 40,000,000 do the best they can under the circumstances, and strain their ingenuity to devise means for purging Catholicity out of the souls of this vast body, as though the religion of Jesus Christ were a fatal disease and a poison.

Consequently, the first thing to do was to change the Prussian constitution, which guaranteed religious freedom independent of state control. By an alteration in Articles XV. and XVIII., religion was brought under complete subjection to the state: Prince Bismarck being compelled to pack the Upper House with his creatures in order to secure a majority for the measure. It passed, and its result, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, is easily told.

Catholic bishops, the successors of the apostles, may no longer exercise apostolic jurisdiction without permission from a Protestant government. A Catholic bishop may not excommunicate a rebellious Catholic without permission from a Protestant government, under the severest penalties.

A Catholic bishop must, under pain of the severest penalties, acknowledge a schismatic as a priest; retain him in his parish, pay him a salary, and allow him to say Mass and preach false doctrine to his Catholic congregation.

A Catholic bishop may not, under the severest penalties, ordain a Catholic priest, unless the candidate for holy orders receive the approval of Protestant government officials.

Catholic seminaries, where students for the Catholic priesthood are trained, must accept the supervision of a Protestant official and the programme of education prescribed by a Protestant government, which has declared war against their religion. If the bishop does not accept these conditions, the seminary is closed.

Catholic candidates for holy orders cannot be exempted from military service; the term of military service embraces a period of twelve years.

Catholic candidates for orders may not be admitted to holy orders before passing three years at a state university under the lectures of Protestant or infidel professors. On their entrance to the university they must matriculate to the satisfaction of those professors, and on leaving it they must pass a rigorous examination, also to the satisfaction of those professors.