ing and morning; besides, we had nothing in the way of food but frozen potatoes and a little fresh meat. The very night of our arrival among our Fathers at Council Bluffs, the river closed. It would be in vain for me to attempt to tell what I felt at finding myself once more amidst our brothers, after having traveled 2,ooo Flemish leagues, in the midst of the greatest dangers and across the territories of the most barbarous nations. I had, however, the grief of observing the ravages which unprincipled men, liquorsellers, had caused in this budding mission; drunkenness, with the invasions of the Sioux on the other hand, had finally dispersed my poor savages. While awaiting a more favorable turn of events, the good Fathers Verreydt and [Christian] Hoekents busy themselves with the cares of their holy ministry among some fifty families that have had the courage to resist these two enemies. I discharged my commission to them from the Sioux, and I venture to hope that in future they will be quiet in that quarter.
I left Council Bluffs on the 14th of December for Westport, a frontier town of Missouri. I met neither obstacle nor accident in the country of the Otoes, Iowas, Sauks, hickapoos, Delawares and Shawanos, which I traversed. On the night of the 22d I found myself at Father Point's at Westport. On the day following I took the stage in the town of Independence, and on New Year's eve I arrived among my dear brothers at the University of St. Louis.
I am now preparing to return to that untended vineyard of the Lord. I shall start early in the spring, accompanied by two fathers and three brothers of our community. You know that such an undertaking cannot be carried out with