374 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 



agreeable and instructive acquaintance also of the Roman 

 Catholic priest, the Rev. J. De Smet, who kindly presented 

 me to Mrs Tucker, the superioress of the Convent of the 

 Ladies of the Sacred Heart, the convent founded, if I re 

 collect rightly, about the year 1830. I visited in company 

 with my reverend friend the Roman Catholic college and 

 convent, and nothing could be better or more perfect than 

 the order in which they were kept. The dormitory in 

 which I met the young ladies assembled at the convent 

 was the most scrupulously clean and neat apartment I 

 ever saw, its pink window curtains casting a modest and 

 retiring light on everything, but, at the same time, beau 

 tifully setting off the snowy whiteness of the beds. In 

 St Louis the Roman Catholics are numerically powerful 

 and very rich, and nothing proves more the never-failing 

 desire of those religionists to push the interests of their 

 faith wheresoever they can obtain a footing, than the fact 

 of their French Indian settlement on the prairies, " Potto- 

 waddami," so pronounced, at which I rested one night on 

 my return from Fort Riley. 



On the afternoon of the 14th I accompanied Dr Pope 

 to a semi-private exhibition of the working of the fire- 

 engine attached to the station of the Fire Alarm Tele 

 graph in St Louis. Nothing could surpass this establish 

 ment. To the engine were attached four splendid horses, 

 all driven by one man on the horse at wheel on the near 

 side. One of these horses was as magnificent and showy 

 an animal as ever I saw in a gentleman's carrriage in 

 England. Of course I expected that to show me the force 

 and power of the water thrown by the steam-engine from 

 the long hose we should proceed at least to some unin 

 habited prairie outside the town ; but not a bit of it. We 

 marched but a short way, and then took up a position 



