church, but now hardly observed except in St. Peter's. The altars are everywhere formally stripped on Holy Thursday, and remain uncovered until the following Saturday. During Tenebræ on Thursday evening, each of the canons and other functionaries of St. Peter's, receives a species of brush curiously made of chip, and, after the office, the entire chapter proceeds to the high altar, where seven flagons of wine and water have been prepared. These are poured upon the altar, and the canons, passing six at a time before it, rub it all over with their brushes, after which it is washed with sponges and dried. Saint Isidore, of Seville, in the seventh century, mentions the custom of washing the altars, and even the pavement, of the church on this day, in commemoration of that act of humility, by which our Redeemer washed his disciples' feet; and St. Eligius records, in similar terms, both the practice and the motive. The Roman Ordo, Abbot Rupert, and other writers, speak of this ceremony as commonly practised; and many documents of the middle ages show it to have been observed at Sienna, Benevento, Bologna, and other churches. It was no less practised in England; for the Sarum Missal thus describes it: "After dinner, let all the clerks meet in the church to wash the altars. First, let water be blessed out of choir and privately. Then let two of the most dignified priests be prepared, with a deacon and subdeacon, and two acolyths, all vested in albs and amices, and let two clerks bear wine and water, and let them begin with the high altar and wash it, pouring thereon wine and water." After a minute description of the prayers to be said in the course of the ceremony, the rubric proceeds: "After the gospel has been sung as at mass, the two aforesaid priests shall wash the feet of all in choir, one on one side and another on the other, and then shall do the same mutually." Many prayers are then said, and another gospel read, during which it is said, "the brethren shall drink the cup of charity, charitatis potum.'

In the many learned treatises, written upon the origin of this ceremony, this curious

* Missale Sarisb. fol. lxxvi.

union of two practices, elsewhere divided between morning and afternoon, has been overlooked, though it is the strongest confirmation of St. Isidore's interpretation against the objections of Du Vert, Batelli, and others. In the Greek Church the practice is still observed, as Leo Allatius has proved at length, as it is among the Dominicans and Carmelites. But almost everywhere else it has disappeared, except in the Vatican basilica, where you may see it practised on Thursday evening.

These examples will suffice to show, how the ceremonies of Holy Week, as performed in the Vatican, have preserved rites, formerly very general in the Church, but which would have been almost entirely lost in practice, had they not been here jealously observed. There is another great historical point, of which testimony has been recorded in these sacred functions, and which, therefore, must not be passed over. This is the ancient union between the Latin and Greek Churches, and the reconciliation after the latter's defection. Of the former, evidence is given in the use of Greek words and phrases in the Liturgy; one instance, the Kyrie Eleison, belongs to every day; you have seen, in the adoption of the Greek Trisagion, a testimony peculiar to the service of Holy Week. Anciently, there were other instances; as for example, one to which I before alluded, when I said, that the lessons on Holy Saturday, intended for the catechumens' instruction, used to be sung in both languages. Anastasius Bibliothecarius tells us, that Benedict III had a book written, in which were the Greek and Latin lessons, to be sung on Holy Saturday. Mabillon has brought abundant evidence of this usage, which is mentioned by Amalarius about the year 812, and several other writers of the following centuries. Later, it would appear, that the double recitation was confined to the first of the twelve lessons, as otherwise the service would have been excessively long. We find, indeed, in the eleventh century, the clause added to this rubric "Si Dominus Papa velit," (if our Lord the Pope wishes it;) and thus probably, by its not being often required, the custom gradually disappeared. The

same may be said of the practice which formerly prevailed, of singing the epistle and gospel, in Greek as well as Latin, on Good Friday. Both these observances were revived in the last century, by Pope Benedict XIII, who was most studious and tenacious of ancient rites, but relapsed into disuetude after his time.* However desirable it might be to have these old usages restored, I think these circumstances can hardly fail to strike the eye, as strongly illustrating the historical view I am taking to-day, of these offices and functions. For we see, on the one hand, that the Church has carefully kept all that she received from the Greek Church, in relation to the worship of him who cannot change; for, whatever prayers she was used to recite in that language, she did not allow any feelings towards that, her rebellious daughter, and now bitter adversary, to abolish. But, such instruction as used to be recited in that tongue, for the edification of strangers who spoke it, and happened to be present, she allowed to drop, without any act of angry abrogation, into neglect, as no longer of use. When, however, the Greek Church, in the council of Florence, was reunited to her, and owned obedience to the holy see, it was decreed that the Pope, on solemn occasions, should be served by a Greek, as well as a Latin deacon and sub-deacon, and that the gospel and epistle should be sung in both languages. This regulation has been ever since duly observed, as you will see on Easter-day; when two Greek attendants, vested in the sacred robes of their own nation, (the deacon wearing the stole, as of old, upon his left shoulder, and having embroidered on it the word as holy," thrice repeated,) will sing those two portions of the Liturgy in the Greek language and chant. This com

* Cancelliere, Descrizione della Settimana Santa, pp. 123, 169.

pletes the history of the connexion between the two Churches. The old prayers once common to both, and yet retained by us, give evidence of former union. The silent abolition of the instructions given in that language, attests the subsequent separation, and the rite prescribed to commemorate the reunion, not only records that event, but by its continuance, acts as a protest against the perfidy, which violated the solemn stipulations there made, and proves the readiness of the Roman Church to keep up to all her engagements.

The principle by which I have endeavored to show, this morning, that the offices of the Holy Week, especially as performed in Rome, ought to be viewed, is the consideration of them as monumental observances sprung up in different ages, and accurately recording the condition and feeling of each. Nothing but a divine enactment can give to the external forms of worship an invariable character, such as in great measure was bestowed upon that of Israel. Of any command or direction to give a specific ritual we have no trace in the new law; and the Church, ever true to the finest principles of nature, after prescribing all that was essential and necessary for the sacraments-allowed the instinctive and rational feelings of man to have their play, watching carefully over their suggestions, that they should not lead to error or impropriety, and thus gradually formed its code of religious and ceremonial observances, as every good constitution has ever been formed, from the development of sound fundamental principles, through the experimental knowledge accumulated by ages. Was it wrong in so doing? This, indeed, is a question, which my next and last discourse will better give materials to solve, when I speak of the influence which the offices of this week have exercised upon the social and moral world.

VERY REV. FATHER,

IN

N a letter, which I suppose has been communicated to you, I informed the bishop of St. Louis of the results, as they bear on religion, of my journey to the Rocky Mountains. But that letter, though lengthy, could give you but a very imperfect idea of the desert that I passed eight months in traversing, and of the tribes who make it the scene of their perpetual and sanguinary rivalships. It will, I think, therefore, be useful to resume the history of my mission; and I repeat it the more willingly, since I am called to penetrate again into those deep solitudes, from which I may, perhaps, never return; to my brethren, who take an interest in my dear Indians, I owe an account of all my observations upon their character and customs, upon the aspect and resources of the country they inhabit, and upon their dispositions, how far they are favorable to the propagation of the gospel.

We arrived the 18th of May upon the banks of the Nebraska, or Big Horn River, which is called by the French by the less suitable name of the Flat River. It is one of the most magnificent rivers of North America; from its source which is hidden among the remotest mountains of this vast continent, to the river Missouri, to which it is tributary, it receives a number of torrents descending from the Rocky Mountains; it refreshes and fertilizes immense valleys, and forms at its mouth the two great geographical divisions of the upper and lower Missouri. As we proceeded up this river, scenes more or less picturesque opened upon our view. In the middle of the Nebraska, thousands of islands, under various aspects, presented nearly every form

7th February, 1841. of lovely scenery. I have seen some of those isles which, at a distance, might be taken for flotillas, mingling their full sails with verdant garlands, or festoons of flowers; and as the current flowed rapidly around them, they seemed, as it were, flying on the waters, thus completing the charming illusion, by this apparent motion. The tree which the soil of these islands produces in the greatest abundance is a species of white poplar, which is called cotton tree; the savages cut it in winter, and make of the bark, which appears to have a good taste, food for their horses.

Along the banks of the river, vast plains extend, where we saw, from time to time, innumerable herds of antelopes. Further on we met with a quantity of buffaloes' skulls and bones, regularly arranged in a semicircular form, and painted in different colors. It was a monument raised by superstition, for the Pawnees never undertake an expedition against the savages who may be in hostility with their tribe, or against the wild beasts of their forests, without commencing the chase, or war, by some religious ceremony, performed amidst those heaps of bones. At the sight of them our huntsmen raised a cry of joy; they well knew that the plain of the buffaloes was not far off, and they expressed by those shouts the anticipated pleasure of spreading havoc among the peaceful herds.

Wishing to obtain a commanding view of the hunt, I got up early in the morning and quitted the camp alone, in order to ascend a hillock near our tents, from which I might fully view the widely extended pasturages. After crossing some ravines, I reached an eminence, whence I descried a plain, whose radius was about twelve miles, entirely covered with wild oxen. You could not form, from any thing in your Eu

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ropean markets, an idea of their movement and multitude. Just as I was beginning to view them, I heard shouts near me; it was our huntsmen, who rapidly rushed down upon the affrighted herd; the buffaloes fell in great numbers beneath their weapons. When they were tired with killing them, each cut up his prey, put behind him his favorite part, and retired, leaving the rest for the voracity of the wolves, which are exceedingly numerous in these places. And they did not fail to enjoy the repast. On the following night I was awakened by a confused noise, which, in the fear of the moment, I mistook for impending danger; I imagined, in my first terror, that the Pawnees had conspired to dispute with us the passage over their lands, had assembled around our camp, and that these lugubrious cries were their signal of attack. "Where are we," said I, abruptly, to my guide: "Hark ye!-Rest easy," he replied, lying down again in his bed; “we have nothing to fear; it is the wolves that are howling with joy; after their long winter's hunger, they are making a great meal to-night on the carcasses of the buffaloes, which our huntsmen have left after them on the plain.”

In the same place may also be seen the animal which is called Wistonwish by the savages, and by travellers, the dog of the meadows, and to which I would give the name of American squirrel. It is larger than the grey squirrel, but resembles it in every other respect: its manner of moving is as animated and graceful; the color of its skin is of a deeper brown; its teeth and claws are exactly of the same form; and its tail, shorter and less tufted, shades its pretty head. They never go alone; a secret instinct keeps them together in families. The situation of their holes is admirably chosen ; it is upon the declivity of a hill, the border of a lake, or the bank of a river, and the site is always sufficiently high to secure them against any inundation, however great. The most perfect order reigns in each colony; one might say that here is a little model-republic in the midst of the desert. Travellers who are greatly taken with their admirable industry, and envy their undisturbed tranquillity, relate that the sole nour

ishment of these little creatures consists of

the grass roots, and that the dew of heaven forms their only drink.

On the 28th we forded the southern arm of the river Platte. All the land lying between this river and the great mountains is only a heath, almost covered with lava and other volcanic substances. This sterile country, says a modern traveller, resembles in nakedness and the monotonous undulations of its soil, the sandy deserts of Asia. Here no permanent dwelling has ever been erected, and even the huntsman seldom appears in the best seasons of the year. At all other times the grass is withered, the streams dried up; the buffalo, the stag, and the goat, desert those dreary plains, and retire with the expiring verdure, leaving behind them a vast solitude completely uninhabited. Deep ravines, which were formerly the beds of impetuous torrents, intersect it in every direction, but now-a-days the sight of them only adds to the painful thirst which tortures the traveller. Here and there are heaps of stones, piled confusedly like ruins; ridges of rock, which rise up before you like impassable barriers, and which interrupt, without embellishing, the wearisome sameness of these solitudes. Such are the Black Hills; beyond the Rocky Mountains rise the imposing land-marks of the Atlantic world. The passes and valleys of this vast chain of mountains afford an asylum to a great number of savage tribes, many of whom are only the miserable remnants of different people who were formerly in the peaceable possession of the land, but are now driven back by war into almost inaccessible defiles, where spoliation can pursue them no further.

This desert of the west, such as I have just described it, seems to defy the industry of civilized man. Some lands, more advantageously situated upon the banks of rivers, might, perhaps, be successfully reduced to cultivation, others might be turned into pastures as fertile as those of the east; but it is to be feared that this immense region forms a limit between civilization and barbarism, and that bands of malefactors, organized like the Caravans of the Arabs, may here practise their depredations with

impunity. This country will, perhaps, one day be the cradle of a new people, composed of the ancient savage races, and of that class of adventurers, fugitives, and exiles, that society has cast forth from its bosom a heterogeneous and dangerous population, which the American Union has collected like a portentous cloud upon its frontiers, and whose force and irritation it is constantly increasing, by transporting entire tribes of Indians from the banks of the Mississippi, where they were born, into the solitudes of the west, which are assigned as their place of exile. These savages carry with them an implacable hatred towards the whites, for having, they say, unjustly driven them from their country, far from the tombs of their fathers, in order to take possession of their inheritance. Should some of these tribes hereafter form themselves into hordes, similar to the wandering people, partly shepherds, and partly warriors, who traverse with their flocks the plains of Upper Asia, is there not reason to fear, that in process of time, they with others may organize themselves into bands of pillagers and assassins, having the fleet horses of the prairies to carry them, with the desert as the scene of their outrages, and inaccessible rocks to secure their lives and plunder?

We beheld, on the 31st of May, one of the most remarkable curiosities of the desert; it is called the Chimney: it is a cone, seventy-five yards high, and about a league in circumference. It is situate upon a tableland, and has on its summit a column of petrified clay, a hundred and twenty feet high, by from twenty to forty feet broad, which has procured for it the above name. It is visible at thirty miles' distance. Upon a nearer approach, an enormous rent appears at its top, which seems to forbode its fall. At its base, some families of the tribe of Big Horns, vegetate. The rattlesnakes and dangerous reptiles that are to be met at every step, would be a scourge to the country, had not the savages discovered, in a root very common here, an infallible specific for every venomous bite.

On the 4th of July we crossed the Ramée, a tributary river of the Platte. About forty

cabins erected on its banks, serve as dwellings for a part of the tribe of the Sheyennes. These Indians are distinguishable for their civility, their cleanly and decent habits. The men, in general, are of good stature, and of great strength; their nose is aquiline, and their chin strongly developed. The neighboring nations consider them the most courageous warriors of the prairies. Their history is the same as that of all the savages who have been driven back into the west: they are only the shadow of the once powerful nation of the Shaways, who formerly lived upon the banks of the Red River. The Scioux, their irreconcilable enemies, forced them, after a dreadful war, to pass over the Missouri, and to retreat behind the Warrican, where they fortified themselves; but the conquerors again attacked them, and drove them from post to post, into the midst of the Black Hills, situate upon the waters of the Great Sheyenn river. In consequence of these reverses, their tribe, reduced to two thousand souls, has lost even its name, being now called Sheyennes, from the name of the river that protects the remnant of the tribe. The Sheyennes have not since sought to form any fixed establishment, lest the Scioux might come again to dispute with them the lands which they should have chosen for their country: they live by hunting, and follow the buffalo in his various migrations.

The principal warriors of the nation invited me to a solemn banquet, in which three of the great chief's best dogs were served up to do me honor; I had half a one for my share. You may judge of my embarrassment, when I tell you that I attended one of those feasts at which every one is to eat all that is offered him. Fortunately one may call to his aid another guest, provided that the request to perform the kind office be accompanied by a present of tobacco.

In our way from Ramée, the sojourn of the Sheyennes, to the Green river, where the Flat Heads were waiting for me, we successively passed the Black mountains, which owe this denomination not to the color of the soil and rocks that form them, but to the sombre verdure of the cedars and