CHAPTER VII.
LAST JOURNEYS OF FATHER DE SMET.
A fall on board ship-Beautiful weather at sea-Neptune once more-Peaceful crossing -Escorts party of sisters for Montana as far as Omaha-Visits his first neophytes, the Potawatomies, againTheir present status - Still planning for a Sioux mission.
University of St. Louis.' Very Dear and Worthy Doctor:
~1) L OU ask me for a fresh letter, or rather for the continuation of the skeleton of my itinerary. For the last twelve years, at each of my returns to St. Louis, you have been placing, joyously, your album upon my table. Each recurring sight of it is to me a fresh pleasure, like a meeting with an old and familiar acquaintance, and immediately I resume my pen with gladness, to lengthen the old skeleton with one more page. Taking them altogether, my last journeys, whether by land or by sea, have been fortunate and tranquil. I have only a single accident to record; it was on my eighteenth crossing of the Atlantic. I was on board the City o f Baltimore, last December, and two days before I reached Liverpool, a furious storm arose - the rolling of the boat was violent -it is the time for falls! Take care! I made a miss - I took my fall, and had two ribs fractured -lucky, as the Belgians say, in these kinds of misunderstandings, to have come out of the mix-up with head, legs and arms safe. I will give you here my nineteenth crossing of the Atlantic.
On the 12th of June, after taking my farewell of the Reverend Fathers of Notre Dame College at Antwerp and of the friends who had escorted us on board - after receiving
1 From the Linton Album, p. 148. Written in French.