also about Cumberland House twenty-four are dead. I do not know if the sickness has reached the posts on the Saskatchewan yet. I expect to be at Carlton in five or six days when I expect to get news from above.
* * * * * * * *
Your sincere friend and obedient servant,
J. ROWAND.
Cincinnati, Feb. az, I847.
Would that I had words to express, or that we who love God, and who know what it is to save innumerable souls, could feel how exceedingly interesting to faith and to charity should be the Indian tribes of Oregon and Nebraska! Never, since the days of Xavier, Brebeuf,. Marquette and Lallemand, has there been a missionary more clearly pointed out and called and sent for this great work. than Father De Smet, who is requested to present this testimony to the friends of our missions. His plans, I sincerely believe, are all heaven-inspired - as his labors have been sustained by heaven -and they who have the means and the will to aid in so glorious a cause of God and of religion will surely see in heaven the souls they shall have thus been rendered instrumental in placing there.
Should there be any in England, France or Belgium, who chance to be acquainted with or who may favorably regard anything to which my name is attached, to such I beg most earnestly to recommend the Indian missions, west of the Mississippi, in behalf of which Father De Smet again is willing to risk a life which has been too often already exposed, with a martyr's heroism, in the same sacred cause.
X JOHN B. PURCELL,
[SEAL.] Bishop of Cincinnati.