gave me my occasion to instruct them in regard to this first of prevarications and its sad consequences. When I had finished the chief spoke again, and after scolding his wife well he protested in the name of all concerned that it would not happen again. Then these poor people tried as best they could to indemnify us, and offered us two bags of wild roots and a basket full of cakes of pine-moss, as hard as glue. Necessity compelled us to accept these novel cakes; they are prepared by boiling in water; they then form a thick elastic soup, having the appearance and the taste of soap. It can be eaten, if seasoned with a good appetite and a prolonged absence of other nourishment.
On the Ist of December I found myself again in Horse Prairie, among the Kalispels, who had repaired thither from different parts of the mountains to see me as I returned. I stayed with them three days, instructing and exhorting them from morning till evening. My ten young Flatheads all assumed the functions of catechists, and went about it with a zeal which could be equaled only by the assiduity, attention and eagerness to learn of the savages who listened to them. On the 3d, the feast of St. Francis Xavier, I baptized sixty persons in this place, of whom thirteen were adults. The night preceding had been very stormy, as if hell had been unchained against us. A terrible gust of wind carried my tent away and cast it into the branches of a great pine. As I could not replace it, I found myself exposed for the rest of the night to hail, snow and rain; but there is a remedy for every evil; I found one under a thick buffalo robe, where I passed the time that was left me for sleep agreeably enough.
On the 8th we reached once more our little establishment of St. D7ary's, amid shooting and shouting from our good Indians running to meet us.