land route from Louisville to St. Louis crossed the river. Here they debarked, disposed of their boats, sent most of their baggage by steamboat to St. Louis, and themselves started on foot across the country. It was still early in the spring, the ground was soaked with rain and in many places covered deep with water. Houses were few and far between, and in their absence barns and outhouses were their only shelter. It was a rough and trying journey and they were well-nigh exhausted when, on the last day of May, they found themselves on the east shore of tile Mississippi opposite the city of St. Louis. Crossing the river they reached their destination in the future metropolis of the Mississippi valley. For the present, however, they were not to remain there, but to go on some fifteen miles farther to the little village of Florissant, in St. Ferdinand township, where they were to found the second novitiate of the Society of Jesus in the United States.
The new home of the young novices lay directly north of St. Louis not far from the Missouri river. It was a beautiful spot, typical of the attractive rural scenery in tile environs of tile city. It had formerly been the country seat of one of the Spanish governors of upper Louisiana. Here the little company from Whitemarsh fell to work in earnest, conscious that they were laying the foundation of a great institution in the religious and educational growth of their city and the surrounding country. It was truly an humble beginning for these young men, all of whom had given up homes of comfort and the promise of successful careers in their native land in order to devote their lives to the greater glory of God. " It is at such times," to quote Father De Smet on another occasion, " that one feels the full weight * * * of the sacrifice he makes in a good and holy cause." They must have felt this as they took up their abode in a rude log structure, in the low loft of which seven of their number were crowded together on pallets of straw in a single room. The lower room was divided by a curtain into two parts,