civilization depends largely on the careful training of girls, took extraordinary pains to secure capable teachers; and, as the best were to be found in convents,-religious being then the only persons who adopted teaching as a life profession,-he turned to his native Canada for Sœurs Grises. But to his great grief, his project proved impracticable. He consulted Father Beaubois, Superior of the Jesuits, a man of great zeal and energy. Their views were identical, and Beaubois offered to apply to the Ursulines of Rouen. After much negotiation, a treaty was concluded, September 13th, 1726, by which these ladies engaged to supply teachers and nurses for New Orleans. It was, then, through the Jesuits that the first school for girls and the first regular hospital were established in the Louisiana of La Salle, which extended from the Great Lakes to the Mexican Gulf, and from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains.

A lady bearing the somewhat singular name of Tranchepain (slice of bread) was appointed Superior. Mother Tranchepain, a convert from Calvinism, had taken the veil among the Ursulines in Rouen, in 1699. The contradictions, disappointments, and trials that wait upon all great enterprises were not wanting to this. Bishops who at first approved of their design, afterwards refused to allow nuns. of their respective dioceses to leave, and some were obliged to ap peal to Cardinal Fleury.' Louis XV., of whom so little good can be said, was a generous patron of this work, as the brève or official letter setting forth its objects and conditions testifies. Here is an

extract:

"His Majesty, wishing to favor everything that can contribute to the relief of the sick and the education of the young, has approved the treaty made between the Company of the Indies and the Ursuline Religious, the intention of His Majesty being that they should enjoy, without interference, all that has been or shall be granted to them by the said Company. His Majesty takes them under his protection and safeguard, and in proof of his good will has commanded the hastening of the present Letters Patent, which he has willed to sign with his own hand.-Fontainebleau, September 18th, 1726,"

All the nuns for the Louisiana mission assembled in the monastery of Hennebon, in Brittany, to acknowledge as Superior Marie Tranchepain of St. Augustin, January 1st, 1727. Their action was confirmed by two letters from the Bishop of Quebec, Monseigneur Delacroix, one to Mother Tranchepain, the other to Father Beaubois. Louisiana was in his diocese, Quebec being under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Rouen The missionary

1 Almost all the Ursulines in France were volunteers in the good cause, and those obliged to remain at home had a holy envy of those selected for this perilous mission.

nuns were twelve. They gave their submission according to their respective ranks, eager to sacrifice themselves for the glory of God and the salvation of their fellow creatures, and filled with a holy. enthusiasm which helped them in their sublime vocation. Two, at least, the Mother Superior and the novice, Madeleine Hachard, of Rouen, have left in their "Relations" evidence not only of sincere devotion to God and ardent zeal for souls, which they possessed in common with the rest, but also of liberal scholarship, fine culture, and unusual intellectual ability.

The terms offered by the Indian Company under whose auspices they were to sail, evince great interest in the sick and the children. They travelled at the expense of the Company, and each received, before embarking, a gift of 500 livres. Until their plantation should be in full cultivation, each was guaranteed 600 livres a year. A fine convent in course of erection was given them in perpetuity. Three nuns were to be always at the service of the hospital; one was set aside for the free school, and one to help her in case of overwork. It was expressly stipulated that those in charge of the sick and the free schools must not be disturbed. This shows that New Orleans was scarcely founded when provision of the most liberal and excellent description was made for the education of the "masses." Should the nuns, through want of health, or any other cause, wish to return to France, they were free to go at the expense of the Company. But not one looked back after having put her hand to the plough.

III.

On the 27th of January, 1727, the nuns looked their last on Paris, whence they journeyed to L'Orient, delayed by execrable road and bad weather, but bright and cheerful under all contrarieties. On February 22d, a day since memorable in the history of the United States, they bade adieu to their country, "for the glory of God and the salvation of the poor savages." They sailed in the Gironde with the Jesuit Fathers, Tartarin and Doutreleau, and "Frère Crucy," who, with Madeleine Hachard, being the youngest of the party, considered it “their duty to amuse the rest." No words of ours can describe, nor would it be easy to imagine in these days of rapid travel, Pullman boudoirs and ocean palaces, the sufferings of those "who went down to the sea in ships" a hundred and sixty years ago. The voyage had its chroniclers; every incident is vividly described in the letters and diaries of Mother Tranchepain and Sister Hachard, which have most unaccountably escaped the researches of the historians and romancists of Louisiana. These ladies, first teachers of Louisiana, wrote with ease and elegance, and a grace and liveliness which the lecturers who expatiate so perseveringly on the benighted times of old could not, we fear, equal.

It would take too long to give details of this seven months' journey from Paris to New Orleans, over the stormy Atlantic, among the West Indian Isles, on the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Mississippi.' Now they were threatened with a watery grave, again with starvation and thirst; once the ship barely escaped hostile corsairs, later they encountered savages of so peculiarly ferocious a type that they murdered by slow tortures all the whites they captured, and made every victim drink his own blood. Probably no scene on earth is so bleak and dreary as the entrance from the Gulf to the Mississippi. An interminable waste of waters, a vast morass impassable for man or beast, shoals and sand bars, low strips of coast covered with poplars, prairies of reeds, a wilderness of cane-brakes-the mouths of the river were then strewn with driftwood and half choked with wrecks. As they ascended, forests that seemed coeval with the creation; here and there a solitary hut for pilots, stretches of green savannah, gaunt trunks of trees stuck fast in the sand, snags, to-day the crux of the river-man, gigantic cyprus shrouded in funereal moss, half submerged in the yellow waves. Gloom and magnificence everywhere mingled; fishes disporting themselves ruffled the old-gold surface of the melancholy river; blue cranes like flying skeletons hovered about the masts; swarthy, half nude natives in pirogues and chaloupes glided among the wondrous waves, shimmering in the mystic charm of the summer sunlight. But dreadful was the navigation of the lower Mississippi in those days. "The trials and fatigues of our five months' sea voyage," writes one novice, "are not to be compared with what we had to endure in our journey from the Gulf to New Orleans, a distance of thirty leagues.”

As the Sisters neared their future home, the flat monotony of the landscape was agreeably diversified by masses of dark foliage, sparkling at night with fire-flies, which made a gorgeous illumination. Planters' houses squatting among the half cleared areas— huge, unwieldly structures, wide halls dividing their whole length, -the river beating against the edge of the miry ground and threatening to submerge it; right joyfully were the travellers welcomed by the habitans," honest people from France or Canada, who will send us their children." "They are enthusiastic over our arrival, because they will not now be obliged to go to France to educate their daughters."

The nuns reached New Orleans on August 7th, 1727. An early writer has described the village as a vast sink or sewer. It was surrounded by a deep ditch, and fenced with sharp stakes, wedged

1 The Spanish annals add to the trials of their voyage the cruelty of the Captain, but no mention is made of this in the letters of Madeleine Hachard.

VOL. XI.-26

closely together. Tall reeds and coarse grasses grew in the streets, and a stone's throw from the rickety church reptiles hissed, and wild beasts and malefactors lurked, protected by impenetrable jungle. One novice gives a flattering description of the town: "It is very handsome, well-built and regularly laid out. . . . . The streets are wide and straight; the houses wainscoted and latticed, the roofs supported by white-washed pillars and covered with shingles, that is, thin boards cut to resemble slates and imitating them to perfection. . . . . The colonists sing that our town is as beautiful as Paris. But I find a difference. The songs may persuade those who have never seen the capital of France. But I have seen it, and they fail to persuade me."

The tropical gorgeousness of the vegetation charmed her. The country, save for a small space about the church, was thickly wooded to the water's edge, and the trees were of prodigious height. The streets and squares, laid out by the engineer, La Tour, were still mostly on paper only. The air was on fire with mosquitoes, every one provided with a sting like a fine, red hot nail. Yet she found the climate balmy and soothing, and readily believed the boast of the Creoles that it was the most salubrious on earth. She remarks that those who had given the nuns a poor idea of the place had not seen its progress for several years. The tremendous hurricane of 1723 had swept away the cabins in which the earliest settlers had found a miserable shelter. And the town was rebuilt on a scale of modest splendor which surprised and delighted the nuns.

Mother Tranchepain dilates on her joy and consolation on touching the soil of New Orleans: “We set out for Father Beaubois' house, and met him coming towards us, leaning on a staff, because of his weakness. He looked pale and weary, but on seeing us brightened up"-he was recovering from a dangerous illness. A crayon sketch, kindly lent the writer by the amiable successor of Mother Tranchepain, gives a lively representation of the "Landing of the Ursulines." The nuns are in procession, wearing the ample garb of their Order. Sister Hachard's fine, strong lineaments are partially concealed by the flowing white veil of a novice. F. Beaubois presents them to the Capuchin pastors of the town, and points out the Indians and negroes, their future charges. A negress holding a solemn ebony baby regards the group with awe and wonderment. A beautiful squaw, decked with beads and shells, surrounded by plump papooses, half reclines with natural grace on some logs, and a very large Congo negro has dropped his work and betaken himself to the top of a woodpile to gaze leisurely on the scene. Claude Massy, an Ursuline postulant, carries a cat which she tenderly caresses; another, "Sister Anne," is searching a basket for

something. Both wear the high peaked Normandy cap. Franciscans heavily bearded, and Jesuits in large cloaks, appear in the distance. Immense trees, which have long since disappeared, overshadow the whole group. The picture is a most interesting and valuable relic, probably the only one in existence which shows tout ensemble the first schoolmasters and schoolmistresses of any country, and its earliest preachers of the Gospel of Peace.

The nuns breakfasted with F. Beaubois. Governor Perier, Madame Perier, and all the chief people welcomed them as risen from the dead, for they had been given up as lost. Bienville's country house, the best in the colony, given them provisionally, was a two story edifice with a flat roof, used as a belvidere or gallery, situated on Bienville street, which runs perpendicularly to the river, between Royal and Chartres streets, which are parallel to it. Six doors gave ingress and egress to the apartments on the ground floor. Large and numerous windows, with sashes covered with fine linen, let in as much light as glass. The garden opened on Bienville street. From the roof the nuns might gaze on a scene of weird and solemn splendor. Swamps and clumps of palmetto and tangled vines; the surrounding wilderness with groups of spreading live oaks (chênières), cut up by glassy bayous, was the home of reptiles, wild beasts, vultures, herons, and many wondrous specimens of the fauna of Louisiana. Here were flocks of the pelican, fabled to feed its young from its bosom, and chosen as a symbol of the teeming soil of Louisiana as it had been chosen from earlier times as a beautiful type of Jesus, pius pelicanus, who feeds His children with His own Sacred Body and Blood. Our novice makes the immense trees, which surround the garden, responsible for the terrible atoms she calls frappes d'abord, "which sting without mercy and threaten to assassinate us." They came at sunset and, after preying on the nuns all night, returned to the woods

at sunrise.

The holy sacrifice of the Mass was offered for the first time in the temporary convent, August 9th, 1727, by F. Beaubois, who acted as chaplain to the little community. In accordance with their earnest desire, he placed the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle which their deft fingers had lovingly prepared, October 5th. They were the only consecrated virgins in the vast region now known as the United States, and it would not be easy to imagine their emotion when, bowed down before the Awful Presence, they offered reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the indifference or sinfulness of the multitude, and besought the Fountain of all mercies to bestow the gift of Faith on the savages they had come so far to reclaim.

This, then, was the first girls' school established in Louisiana.