long to be able to leave a missionary amongst them. They had already taken a step toward the civilized life by attempting the cultivation of potatoes. They offered me some, which were the first I had seen since I left tile United States. Their lodges are made of mats of rushes, like those of the Potawatomies, east of the mountains.
I cannot pass over in silence a beautiful custom that is observed by these good people: every evening, after prayers, the chief instructs his people, or gives them some salutary advice, to which they all listen with most profound attention, respect and modesty. To see them at their devotions one would be more apt to mistake them for members of a religious order than savages. Tile next day, before my departure, I baptized twenty-seven children of the tribe.
That morning we crossed a mountain and entered the great Camas plain. Wolves are very numerous and very ferocious here; last spring they carried off and devoured more than forty of the Kalispels' horses. There is a boiling spring a short distance to the northeast. A mountainous defile ten miles long led us thence to the lovely Horse Prairie. A fine little lake, about six miles around, at the entrance to this prairie, I called the Lake of Souls, in honor of the church festival celebrated to-day. On that evening we alighted amongst fifteen huts of the same nation, who re
ceived us with equal kindness. Their chief had come several miles to meet me. He acknowledged frankly that having become acquainted with some American ministers, in the course of the summer - he had been told by them that my
prayer (religion) was not a good one. " My heart is divided," said lie, "and I do not know what to adhere to." I had no trouble in making him understand the difference between those gentlemen and priests, and the cause of their calumnious attacks against the only true church of Christ, which their ancestors had abandoned.
On the 3d of November, after prayers and instructions to the savages, we continued our march. We were on the borders of Clark's Fork, to which we were obliged to keep