it was full of interesting incident as they passed the various posts and Indian tribes along the way and these are recorded in great detail in the letters. We shall pass them by here and note only one of unusual character, the meeting with the Mormons at Council Bluffs. Father De Smet saw much of these people. He naturally shared the popular prejudice against what seemed a spurious religion, but he sympathized with them in the persecutions which had virtually exiled them from the United States. He became well acquainted with Young and it is possible that the information he gave him may have influenced that leader in choosing Salt Lake Valley as the future home of his people. The following reference from his letter will be of interest
"In the fall of 1846, as I drew near to the frontier of the State of Missouri, I found the advance guard of the Mormons, numbering about 10,000, camped in the territory of the Omahas, not far from the old Council Bluffs. They had just been driven out for the second time from a state of the Union. They had resolved to winter on the threshold of the great desert, and then to move onward into it to put distance between themselves and their persecutors, without even knowing at that time the goal of their long wanderings, nor the spot where they should once more build for themselves permanent dwellings. They asked me a thousand questions about the regions I had explored and the spot which I have just described to you [the basin of Great Salt Lake] pleased them greatly from the account I gave them of it. Was that what determined them? I would not dare to assert it. They are there. In the last three years Utah has changed its aspect, and from a desert has become a flourishing territory which will soon become one of the states of the Union."
Father De Smet reached the University of St. Louis December 10, 1846, three years and six months after his departure in the opposite direction.
It is worth while to consider here what Father De Smet had accomplished in the past seven years. His prodigious labors, travels, hardships and perils must be placed in the