Father Marquette Author:Reuben Gold Thwaites Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Arrival In Canada When Father Marquette was twenty-nine years of age (in 1666), he received the long- wished-for orders from his superior to proc... more »eed to New France to prepare for the work of a forest missionary. A Jesuit priest, like a soldier, must be always ready to march. He was, therefore, not long in reaching some port in northern France, whence was bound a ship for Quebec. In those days, crossing the Atlantic Ocean was far from being a pleasure excursion. The vessels were small, unventilated, and ill- arranged; they were tossed about by fierce tempests; cooking was often impossible upon them, because of the excessive motion; and the passengers suffered greatly not only from seasickness and ship-fever, and not seldom from scurvy, but frequently from bruises, sprains, or even broken limbs caused by rude pitching and rolling upon the turbulent waves. Navigation charts were but crude and pilots unskilled, with the result that shipwrecks were of frequent occurrence, often entailing prolonged misery and even death. Some of the graphic descriptions of voyages to New France, written by the early Jesuit fathers and published in the Eelations, abound in horrors—although sometimes with comical situations, when viewed from the standpoint of a man who had successfully endured the passage—which must have cooled the ardor of any but the most enterprising or the most zealous of those who would seek fortune or opportunity for service in the New World. But the ordinary trials and disasters of the voyage were increased by ever constant fear of the prowling ships of enemies. Wars were then frequent between the nations of Europe, and navigators did not always know with whom their kings were quarreling; news traveled slowly; and confiding captains sometimes unwittingly fell i...« less