There were now six fathers at Notre-Dame-des-Anges.  They kept incessantly active, improving their residence, cultivating the soil, studying the Indian languages, and ministering to the settlers and to the red men who had pitched their wigwams along the St Charles and the St Lawrence in the vicinity of Quebec.  In spite of Noue’s failure among the Montagnais, the courageous Le Jeune resolved personally to study the Indian problem at first hand; and in the autumn of 1633 he joined a company of redskins going to their hunting ground on the upper St John.  During five months among these savages he suffered from ‘cold, heat, smoke, and dogs,’ and bore in silence the foul language of a medicine-man who made the missionary’s person and teachings subjects of mirth.  At times, too, he was on the verge of death from hunger.  Early in the spring he returned to Quebec, after having narrowly escaped drowning as he Crossed the ice-laden St Lawrence in a frail canoe.  He had made no converts; but he had gained valuable experience.  It was now more evident than ever that among the roving Algonquins the mission could make little progress.

In 1634 the Hurons visited the colony in small numbers, for Iroquois scalping parties haunted the trails, and a pestilence had played havoc in the Huron villages.  Those who came to trade this year gathered at Three Rivers; and thither went Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost to seek once more a passage to Huronia.  The Indians at first stolidly refused to take them; but at length, after a liberal distribution of presents, the three priests and four engages were permitted to embark, each priest in a separate canoe.  They had the usual rough experiences.  Davost and Daniel, who had no acquaintance with the Huron language, fared worse than Brebeuf.  Davost was abandoned among the Ottawas of Allumette Island, his baggage plundered and his books and papers thrown into the river.  Daniel, too, was deserted by his savage conductors.  Both, however, found means to continue the journey.  When Brebeuf reached Otouacha, on the 5th of August, his Indian guides, in haste to get to their villages, suddenly vanished into the forest.  But he knew the spot well; Toanche, his old mission, was but a short distance away.  Thither he hurried, only to find the village in ruins.  Nothing remained of the cabin in which he had spent three years but the charred poles of the framework.  A well-worn path leading through the forest told him that a village could not be far distant, and he followed this trail till he came to a cluster of cabins.  This was a new village, Teandeouiata, to which the inhabitants of his old Toanche had moved.  It was twilight as the Indians caught sight of the stalwart, black-robed figure emerging from the forest, and the shout went up, ‘Echon has come again!’ Presently all the inhabitants were about him shouting and gesticulating for joy.