and he knew perfectly how to impress their minds with the wonders of life and pave the way to the reception of religious truth. " In their hunting expeditions," he once wrote, " I used to pass the beautiful summer and autumnal evenings seated on the grass and flowery meadows of their lovely mountain valleys surrounded by my dear neophytes. They took the liveliest interest in my narratives of the holy writ -on the creation, the deluge, the ark of Noah, the Maccabees, Samson, Joseph and his brethren, etc. I occasionally entertained them on American and European events and wars, on Washington and his great country, on the battles of Napoleon the First, his struggles and his final overthrow at Waterloo."
His intercourse with that wild and roving tribe of freebooters, the Crows, was always interesting. We have noted the astonished remark of a Crow chief when he found what had to be done to inherit the white man's heaven. On a subsequent occasion the good Father explained to them the greatness of the white nation. " They asked me innumerable questions; among others they wished to know the number of the whites. ` Count,' I replied, ` the blades of grass upon your immense plains, and you will know pretty nearly the number of whites.' They all smiled, saying that the thing was impossible, but they understood my meaning. And when I explained to them the vast extent of the villages inhabited by white men (New York, Philadelphia, London, Paris) ; the grand lodges (houses) built as near each other as the fingers of my hand, and four or five piled up, one above the other (meaning the different stories of our dwellings) ; when I told them that some of these lodges (speaking of churches and towers) were as high as mountains and large enough to contain all the Crows together; that in the grand lodge of the national council (the Capitol at Washington) all the great chiefs of the whole world could smoke the calumet at their ease; that the roads in these great villages were always filled with passengers, who came and went more thickly than the vast herds of buffalo that some-