them that the multitudes who had gone were scarcely missed.
Providence has supported my feeble courage, guided my steps, fructified the seed of the gospel in lands which had not yet received them. After traveling many hundred leagues I saw what good could be done among these wandering tribes, always at war, without consolation in misery, because they scarcely know of the hopes of eternity. With the grace of God I hope to return next spring with Bishop
Miege, the vicar-apostolic. We will be able to found missions for those nomad tribes on a soil fertile enough to support them, and thus removing occasion of war, let civilization, with the light of the faith, dawn on these wastes.
The limits of a journal do not permit me to enter into details on this expedition to the Great Desert, on which I have yet published but one letter; but I intend to publish more in the Precis Historiques, published by Reverend E. Terwecoren, at the College of the Society of Jesus, Brussels. Besides a notice on the Mormons, a new sect, dating from 1826, but threatening to play in America the part of the Moslem in Asia, I am preparing notes to develop to Europeans the almost unknown state of religion in that vast portion of the world, and to leave authentic documents on the rising church of the wilderness. I will vary these historical details with notes, written in the desert, on geology, zoology, botany, the manners, religion, and language of the Indians.
This will show what civilized Europeans are too apt to forget, that Catholicity, by the very force of her missions, contributes to the civilization of nations and the development of science. The Government of the United States knows it and encourages our labors. The good to be accomplished is in every respect immense. The Catholics and recent converts need priests to preserve the faith, the pagans
to learn the good tidings of the gospel. The small number of ministers of the Lord there does not suffice for the 4,000,000 Catholics, and for all the Indians who desire 83