ing them, particularly the lack of necessary implements for tilling and tools for building. The missionaries themselves are in great want of these things, and consequently cannot assist the Indians much.
On the day of the great feast of Christmas, I sang the midnight mass. All the Indians, men, women and children, intoned together the Vivat Jesus, the Gloria, the Credo
and several canticles composed in their own tongue. They
sang in really marvelous accord. I could not describe to you the consoling impressions that I felt at this happy moment, at this beautiful solemnity celebrated in the desert. It recalled to me those meetings or agapes of the first times of Christianity, when, as says Saint Paul, the great apostle
of the Gentiles, all had " one heart and one soul." In the week preceding the feast, the Indians had carefully prepared themselves to make a good confession and hear the midnight mass. All, with few exceptions, approached the
Lord's table to partake of the bread of angels. Such a scene is not forgotten, but remains among one's recollections as one of the happiest of his life.
There are among these poor Indians a great many really choice souls; faithful to the grace of God, humble, fervent. and zealous in the accomplishment of their Christian duties, and endowed with that admirable simplicity which the gospel recalls to us in the text, " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." The riches and grandeurs of earth are absolutely unknown to them: they seem careful only for the " one thing needful," the search for the treasures of heaven, which alone can render them
happy in eternity. Nothing could be more touching nor more edifying than the stories their missionaries tell us about them. These happy results abundantly repay the Lord's workmen, and support them amid the privations and miseries that they meet with in this little corner of the world, far from their brethren in Jesus Christ and separated from all that is dear to them in the world: their families and their native land.