three weeks journeyings, we had travelled as far as we could
by steamboat and railroad, and were at the extreme limit of these
splendid methods of civilised locomotion. From this point onward there
was nothing before us but the prairie trail. On and on it stretched for
hundreds of miles, away and away to the land of the north wind. Over
its winding undulating course, long years ago, the hardy pioneers of the
new world adventured themselves; and as they bravely pushed on they were
filled with amazement and awe at the vastness of the great and
illimitable prairies.

Following closely in their trail, and even sometimes themselves the
pioneers, came those early heroic priestly followers of Loyola, eager
and anxious to meet and to make friends of the wild Indians of the
plains and forest, that among them they might plant the cross, and,
according to their belief, by the simple rite of baptism induct them
into the bosom of Mother Church.

In later years much of the romance of the great Trail had worn away.
Commerce and Trade with their multiplied activities had so taken
possession of it that when first we saw it in 1868, the long trains of
noisy creaking Red River carts, and the great canvas-covered wagons of
the adventurous immigrants, were the most conspicuous sights on its
dusty stretches. Occasionally bands of Indian warriors, plumed and
painted, were seen upon it, dashing along on their fiery steeds, out on
some marauding adventure, or more likely, on the lookout for the vast
herds of buffalo that still swarmed in the regions farther west, like
"the cattle on a thousand hills."

It was one of those perfect days in the lovely month of June when we
left the thriving young city of Saint Paul, and with our canvas-covered
wagons, and fourteen picked horses, really entered on the trail. As we
left the frontier city, thus severing the last link that bound us to
civilisation, we realised most vividly that now we were entering upon
our missionary work.

Thirty days were we on this Prairie Trail. Not all of them were of that
rare beauty of the first. Fierce thunderstorms several times assailed
us when it was not always possible to protect ourselves from the
terrible downpour of rain. One night a genuine cyclone wrecked our
camp; tents and wagons with their varied contents went careering in
erratic courses before its irresistible power.

Our way was beset with dangers: bridgeless streams had to be crossed;
prairie fi