Reverend Father Sopranis, visitor of all the missions of the Company of Jesus in North America, was awaiting me at San Francisco.
During my short stay in California, I visited the College of Santa Clara and the residence of our Fathers at San Jose. The college is in a very flourishing state, as is that at San Francisco. At San Jose I visited the establishment of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, whom I had conducted to America in 1843, to the number of five sisters. These first founders are still in good health. The sisters have now two fine large establishments in California. The convent at San Jose contains twenty-two professed sisters, seven novices and two aspirants; there are 120 pupils in the boarding-school, seventy-five day scholars and about the same number attending the school gratis. On Sundays they have a class for servant girls, and assemble the Catholics for Christian teaching. The convent at Marysville has fourteen sisters, who also have around them a good number of children, inmates and outsiders; and are following in the same line with the sisters of San Jose. The convents of the Sisters of Notre Dame are rendering very great service wherever they are established in America. Their scholars in Cincinnati and Boston are counted by thousands. This religious congregation is growing marvelously.
I left San Francisco on the 3d of November. I had the consolation and happiness to serve as companion to our Reverend Father Visitor in his voyage to New York. Several of our dear brothers of St. Ignatius College escorted us on board the vessel. The Pacific Ocean showed itself truly pacific, calm and beautiful, and varied scarcely at all throughout the voyage. We stopped at Acapulco, a Mexican port, to coal and take on the mails.
We reached Panama the night of the 17th, and the following morning we crossed the Isthmus of Panama, fortyseven miles, by rail. Toward evening of the same day we took ship again at Aspinwall, on the steamer North Star.