United States

Just before leaving Tampa we had been brigaded with the First (white) and Tenth (colored) Regular Cavalry under Brigadier-General S. B. M. Young. We were the Second Brigade, the First Brigade consisting of the Third and Sixth (white), and the Ninth (colored) Regular Cavalry under Brigadier-General Sumner. The two brigades of the cavalry division were under Major-General Joseph Wheeler, the gallant old Confederate cavalry commander.

On June 30th we received orders to hold ourselves in readiness to march against Santiago, and all the men were greatly overjoyed, for the inaction was trying. The one narrow road, a mere muddy track along which the army was encamped, was choked with the marching columns. As always happened when we had to change camp, everything that the men could not carry, including, of course, the officers' baggage, was left behind.

When the shrapnel burst among us on the hill-side we made up our minds that we had better settle down to solid siege work. All of the men who were not in the trenches I took off to the right, back of the Gatling guns, where there was a valley, and dispersed them by troops in sheltered parts.

Few passages of history are more striking than those which record the efforts of the earlier French Jesuits to convert the Indians. Full as they are of dramatic and philosophic interest, bearing strongly on the political destinies of America, and closely involved with the history of its native population, it is wonderful that they have been left so long in obscurity. While the infant colonies of England still clung feebly to the shores of the Atlantic, events deeply ominous to their future were in progress, unknown to them, in the very heart of the continent.

 JEAN DE BREBEUF. - CHARLES GARNIER. - JOSEPH MARIE CHAUMONOT. - 
 NOEL CHABANEL. - ISAAC JOGUES. - OTHER JESUITS. - NATURE OF THEIR FAITH. - 
 SUPERNATURALISM. - VISIONS. - MIRACLES.

 THE CENTRE OF THE MISSIONS. - FORT. - CONVENT. - HOSPITAL. - CARAVANSARY. - 
 CHURCH. - THE INMATES OF SAINTE MARIE. - DOMESTIC ECONOMY. - MISSIONS. - 
 A MEETING OF JESUITS. - THE DEAD MISSIONARY.

NATIVE TRIBES.

 OSSOSSANE. - THE NEW CHAPEL. - A TRIUMPH OF THE FAITH. - 
 THE NETHER POWERS. - SIGNS OF A TEMPEST. - SLANDERS. - 
 RAGE AGAINST THE JESUITS. - THEIR BOLDNESS AND PERSISTENCY. - 
 NOCTURNAL COUNCIL. - DANGER OF THE PRIESTS. - BREBEUF'S LETTER. - 
 NARROW ESCAPES. - WOES AND CONSOLATIONS.

 HURON TRADERS. - BATTLE AT THREE RIVERS. - ST. JOSEPH. - 
 ONSET OF THE IROQUOIS. - DEATH OF DANIEL. - THE TOWN DESTROYED.

More than two centuries have elapsed since the Hurons vanished from their ancient seats, and the settlers of this rude solitude stand perplexed and wondering over the relics of a lost people. In the damp shadow of what seems a virgin forest, the axe and plough bring strange secrets to light: huge pits, close packed with skeletons and disjointed bones, mixed with weapons, copper kettles, beads, and trinkets. Not even the straggling Algonquins, who linger about the scene of Huron prosperity, can tell their origin.