found it not easy to protect them against
plunder, and having quashed a conspiracy,
sent for his guests and danced the calumet
before them to remove their fears. By this
time the explorers had gone far enough to
be assured, beyond all possibility of doubt,
that the great river flowed into the Gulf of
Mexico at a point from which they were then
but a few days' journey. If they went on to
the river's mouth they would sail therefore
into the power of the Spaniards, who
would make prisoners of them, and so the
fruit of their voyage would be lost. The
great problem—into what sea did the river
flow? was solved, and they determined to
return while they could do so safely. With
some trouble they rowed up the stream, and
shortening their way by ascending the river
Illinois, they reached Lake Michigan. As he
had baptized on the way home a dying child,
the good Catholic believed that his trouble
was rewarded by the salvation of at least
one soul.

Father Marquette had promised to return
and instruct the inhabitants of an Illinois
town named Kaskaskia. He had some difficulty
in keeping his promise, for the great
hardships endured on his exploring voyage
had brought on a dysentery, and reduced him
sadly. After the close of the next summer,
however, having obtained leave, he set out
with two companions. His health remained
pretty good during a month's navigation, but
when the snow began to fall his malady
returned; and though he travelled on yet
for another fortnight, he was at last
compelled to stop on the fourth of December,
when he had reached the Chicago (connected
with the Illinois by portage), for the river
was then frozen. A cabin was there built for
him, and the sick man spent a cheerless
winter, wanting all needful aid and comfort,
devoting his time to colloquies with heaven
and the spiritual care of his two friends.
Desiring that he might not die without
reaching his little flock, he held with his
companions a solemn novena in honour of the
Immaculate Conception. When the river was
clear of ice, he was indeed able to set out
again, and on the eighth of April came
among his Indians, who received him as an
angel from heaven, and gathered about him
in a beautiful prairie near the town, five
hundred chiefs and fifteen hundred youths,
not counting women and children. They sat
in a circle about Blackgown, who stood, pale
and wasted, at a rustic altar, decorated
with four large pictures of the Virgin. He
spoke his heart to them, and then said Mass.
Three days afterwards he celebrated Easter,
and having thus opened the mission, named
it as he had promised that it should be
named.

Compelled then to return, he was brought
back into Lake Michigan so weak that his
men despaired of being able to carry him
alive to the journey's end; he could not help
himself or even stir, but had to be handled
and carried like an infant. He spent what
strength he had upon religious offices. One
Friday, radiant with joy, he told his friends
that he should die upon the morrow, and gave
directions for the arrangement of his body in
burial; he desired that a cross should be
raised over him, and enjoined them, only
three hours before his death, to take his
chapel-bell when he was dead, and ring it
while they carried him to the grave. So he
spoke as they sailed along the lake, and when
they passed a little hill beside a river's mouth,
he told them that he should be buried there.
They wished to pass on, but the wind
changed and they were forced to turn aside
into the river. Blackgown was then carried
ashore, and a little fire was kindled by him
and a little bark cabin raised hastily over
him; and so, while the men were unloading,
left alone, and stretched upon the wild shore
among the forests, he prepared himself for
death. He had prayed always to die on
Saturday, the day sacred to the Virgin, and
so he did. Upon that spot he died, calmly
and gently, as he had lived. The last entry
in his journal expressed sympathy for the
hardships of the traders. Of his own he never
spoke. One of the last acts of his life was to
bid his companions take rest and sleep, for he
would call them when his agony of death
came on. His two poor friends, shedding
many tears, carried the kind Blackgown
devoutly to his grave upon the hill, ringing the
bell as they went. And so they left him, with
a large cross raised over his body.

When years had passed away, some
Algonquin Indians, who had been first taught
by the priest, on their way home from
hunting resolved to pass by the tomb of
their good Father, whom they loved. When
there, it came into their hearts to take his
bones for burial within the church of
St. Ignatius, at their own mission. They
carried them accordingly within a box of
birch bark, attended by a convoy of thirty
canoes. As they approached the mission, a
fresh procession of canoes, in which were all
the French Indians of the place, headed by
Father Pierson, met the convoy. Then
Father Pierson having by formal inquiries
verified the fact that they were bringing
with them the bones of Marquette, he
followed them solemnly to second burial, and
intoned the De Profundis under the great
vault of heaven, in sight of the canoes still on
the water and of' all the silent people on the
shores.

ST. VORAX'S SINGING-BIRDS.

THE Very Reverend the Dean of St. Vorax
was one of those men whose taste for music
was about equal to that of an ostrich for ice-
cream. His coadjutor, the Reverend Canon
Vellum, had a similar impartiality for music,
but a greater partiality for meddling with