west. Following the discoveries of Marquette and Joliet and the enterprises of La Salle in the Mississippi valley, the zealous missionary penetrated these new fields, undeterred by the discouragements which he had already encountered. A good beginning was made and missions were planted along the way from the head of Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico. Those in the valley of the Mississippi were governed from New Orleans and not from Canada. Although established with much promise of success, the same general causes which had proven fatal to the other missions soon began to operate here. The incompatibility of the Indian nature with the new order of life, the constant clashing of hostile tribes with one another, the irresistible progress of the English, which finally drove France from the soil of North America, were all against the success of the missions. To crown the difficulties with which they were contending, the Jesuits presently found themselves without an existence, cast out by the nations of Europe and deserted by the mother Church. Before their restoration a new nation had arisen on the soil where much of their toil had been expended, and had won a boundless expanse of territory beyond the Mississippi. It was in this newly-acquired empire that the Jesuits were to find their next important field of labor.
During the forty-one years of its suppression the members of the Society kept in touch with one another, working largely in the ranks of the secular clergy. Most of those who were living in 1773 died before the restoration, but nevertheless the elements of life were kept up, and, as old causes of enmity became forgotten and ancient prejudices were softened away, the Society won back the favor of European nations and was reinstated by the Pope in 1814.
At this time there were a few old Jesuit priests at White-marsh in Maryland who founded there the first novitiate of the Society in the United States. About 1820 the affairs of this establishment were in a precarious condition from lack of funds and an abandonment or removal seemed un-