124               Life of Father Jogues.
But Father Jogues was by this time inured to such fare, and he adds with simplicity when describing it, " Custom, hunger, and want of everything renders tolerable at least, if not agreeable, what nature often revolts at."
These excursions, away from the towns and the noise of the Iroquois, always had a charm for the servant of God.     They afforded   him  time  and  opportunity  for greater union with God.    " How often in these journeys," he writes, " and in that quiet wilderness, ' did we sit by the rivers of Babylon, and weep while we remembered thee, Sion' (Ps. cxxxvi. i.) not only exulting that Sion in heaven, but even thee, Jerusalem, praising thy God on earth.   ' How often, though in a strange land, did we sing the canticle of the Lord,' and mountain and wildwood resounded with the praises of their Maker, which from their creation they had never heard !    How often on the stately trees of the forest did I carve the most sacred name of Jesus, that seeing it the demons might fly, who tremble when they hear it!    How often, too, did I not strip off the bark to form on them the Most Holy Cross of the Lord, that the foe might fly before it, and that by it Thou, O Lord my King, ' mightest reign in the midst of Thy enemies'—the enemies of Thy cross, the misbelievers and the pagans who dwell in that land, and the demons who rule so powerfully there!    I rejoiced, too, that I had been led by the Lord into the wilderness, at the very time when the Church recalls the story of His Passion, so that I might more uninterruptedly remember the course of its bitterness and gall, and my soul pine away at the remembrance" (Jer. iii. 20).
As in his first excursion he had made a little oratory of branches in the woods at the foot of a huge tree, on which he had traced the form of the cross; hither, as soon as his work as a slave was done, he returned to commune with his God. " But," adds the pious missionary, " I was not long allowed to enjoy this holy repose: in-