sengers, members of the American Fur Company, set out on the same occasion, intending to repair to the different trading posts established among the Indians of the upper Missouri. They took with them about eighty men; these were principally Canadians, some were Americans, some Irish, German, Swiss and Italians, and several " FranCais de France," a title which is given them here to distinguish them from the Franco-Americans. They went in quest of earthly wealth; Father Hoeken and I in search of heavenly treasures - to the conquest of souls.
We had had a wet spring. Up to the moment of our departure the rain had been excessive; the snows and ice, which had collected in heaps during the rigorous season of the more northern regions, detaching themselves and dissolving, in a very short time swelled the thousand and thousand tributaries of the mighty Mississippi. These rivers, one after the other, precipitated their torrents into the " Father of Waters," and so swelled it that it overflowed, rolling its muddy billows from upland to upland, over a surface of eight, fifteen, and in several places of twenty miles in width. No longer knowing any bounds, the river, usually so grave and sublime, disappeared. Beneath its waters also vanished the verdure of the smiling plains, the stately forests and the varied spring flowers which so delight the eye of the traveler. A vast lake now covered all this space; and the immense volume of water, which went on continually enlarging, carried ruin and desolation among the numerous habitations which covered the lowlands on either shore. We could see the torrent descending with the violence and rapidity of an avalanche, overturning and sweeping everything with its angry waves.
In ordinary times, the sawyers and sand-banks are the principal obstacles to navigation in the western waters; they had now entirely disappeared, and- gave the pilot no anxiety. But other dangers had taken their place; the whole face of the waters seemed covered with wrecks; houses, barns, stables, fences of fields and gardens, were borne away in