Chronicles of Notre Dame du Lac
Edward Sorin, CSC -- Translated by John M. Toohey, CSC, 1895

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1841-1842

pg 3         new missionaries on their journey.  Mme. put up a golden 
             chain to be disposed of by lottery for the new colony, which 
             produced 1500fr.  A sum, almost equal to this was added by 
             private donations, and it was with this modest capital that the 
             seven travellers started on their journey of fifteen hundred 
             leagues, under the protection of Our Lady of the Snows and of the 
             Guardian Angels.  
                  From the very start, they found the necessity to place all 
             their reliance on the protection of heaven; for, besides the 
             narrow limits of their pecuniary resources, their ignorance of 
             the language of the country and of the manners and character of 
             the New World, and the consciousness of their own incapacity, had 
             made them put their hopes in assistance from on high.  And then, 
             according to their own ideas, America was a land of savages, 
             where besides death and la canque, a missionary might expect at 
             every step to have to make extraordinary sacrifices.  However, 
             their ignorance did not always result in disastrous consequences:
             thus, it prevented them from appreciating beforehand their 
             future position in Indiana; on the other hand, the extraordinary 
             sufferings and privations for which they had been looking 
             prepared and encouraged them to meet a thousand lesser crosses 
             chosen for them by God, of which they had never thought.