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their slumbers as many times and kneeling on
botli knees. I have never seen them prevented
from doing so by anything whatever. When they
were notified to come to prayers or to instruction, at
the first word they immediately went to the Chapel.
Not one, no matter how high his position might
be, was ashamed to learn, even from the children.
An aged Captain repeated his lesson—either on
prayers, or some devotional air, or regarding the holy
Ghost, the Guardian Angel, or saint Joseph — with
as much simplicity and as lovable a humility as if he
had been only eight or ten years old. Those whom
I had taught last Winter— among others, my host
and his brother, a Captain — did wonders everywhere,
and at that assembly I could not have desired
anything [104] in the world that could be better,
either for speaking, for edifying by their examples,
or for attracting by means of their presents the more
distant tribes to come and listen to the prayer,—
that is, to be instructed. My host alone gave for
that purpose twelve thousand porcelain beads to the
Erigouechkak tribe.
A fourth proof of the true faith of these people is
their constant thought of death. Formerly,
if one
spoke of death in their country, he became a criminal,
and, as it were, a murderer. Now they have changed
their ; style when they speak of this life they call it
only "the four nights that they have to live."
" Remember that we must die," the Captains often
say to the young people, to maintain them in their
"
duty. Think that to-morrow you may die; and
that you must keep yourselves [105] prepared for a
moment upon which depends an entire eternity.