On this stream
they met Indians who told them that two European vessels were on Hudson
Bay. The Indians showed Albanel tobacco which they had received from
the English.
It seemed futile to go on a voyage of discovery where English were
already in possession. The priest sent one of the Frenchmen and two
Indians back to Quebec for passports and instructions. What the
instructions were can only be guessed by subsequent developments. The
messengers left the depth of the forest on the 19th of September, and
had returned from Quebec by the 10th of October. Snow was falling.
The streams had frozen, and the Indians had gone into camp for the
winter. Going from wigwam to wigwam through the drifted forest. Father
Albanel passed the winter preaching to the savages. Skins of the chase
were laid on the wigwams. Against the pelts, snow was banked to close
up every chink. Inside, the air was blue with smoke and the steam of
the simmering kettle. Indian hunters lay on the moss floor round the
central fires. Children and dogs crouched heterogeneously against the
sloping tent walls. Squaws plodded through the forest, setting traps
and baiting the fish-lines that hung through airholes of the thick ice.
In these lodges Albanel wintered. He was among strange Indians and
suffered incredible hardships. Where there was room, he, too, sat
crouched under the crowded tent walls, scoffed at by the braves, teased
by the unrebuked children, eating when the squaws threw waste food to
him, going hungry when his French companions failed to bring in game.
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