Accompanied by Father Vimont, the superior of the Jesuits, and Governor Montmagny, Maisonneuve went up the river, and took formal possession of the island on the 15th of October in the name of the ’Society of Our Lady of Montreal.’  The colonists spent the winter at St Michel, near Sillery, for there was no room for the Montrealers in the buildings at Quebec.  On May 8, 1642, Maisonneuve led his company—­in a pinnace, a barge, and two row-boats —­to the site of the new colony.  Here, too, were Father Vimont and Madame de la Peltrie, who for the nonce had deserted her Ursulines to accompany Jeanne Mance to a field that offered greater excitement and danger.  On the 18th of May, at a spot where tall warehouses now abound and where the varied roar of the traffic of a great city never ceases, they set up an altar, and Father Vimont consecrated the island mission.  In the course of his sermon he uttered the prophetic words:  ’You are a grain of mustard seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth.  You are few, but your work is the work of God.  His smile is upon you and your children shall fill the land.’  The city of Montreal, the throbbing heart of the business life of Canada, with its half-million and more inhabitants and its magnificent charitable, religious, and educational institutions, is the fulfilment of his words.

But the beginnings were feeble and disheartening.  A few houses, flanked by a windmill and fort, and connected by a footpath where now runs St Paul Street, represented the beginnings of Montreal—­or Ville Marie, as the settlement had been christened by the Society in Paris.

The Iroquois soon learned of Ville Marie.  Within a few months a scalping party of Mohawks paid it a visit, and killed several workmen and wounded others.  The wounded became the care of Jeanne Mance, who never henceforth lacked patients.  Between the labourers injured by accident in the forest and the wounded from Iroquois fights, the gentle-handed nurse and her assistants were kept always busy.  Many of her patients were friendly Indians who had suffered in the raids; sometimes even a sorely smitten Iroquois would be borne to the rude hospital.

But the mission did not grow.  The Algonquins and Hurons viewed the island of Montreal as too exposed for a permanent encampment, for the Iroquois ever hovered about it.  At no season of the year was Ville Marie immune from attack; night and day the inhabitants had to be on the alert; and often the cry ‘The Iroquois!’ sent the entire population to the shelter of the fort.  For fifteen years there was little change in the population, and year after year the same dangers and hardships faced the people.  But Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance hoped on, confident that Ville Marie was destined to have a glorious future.  In 1653 Marguerite Bourgeoys, a woman of great force of character, arrived in the colony to open a school.  Finding no white pupils, she gathered about her a few red children, and made