CISTERCIANS
787
CISTERCIANS
and became a religious at Val-Sainte. His commu-
nity was at that time composed of seven priests, seven-
teen lay brothers, and twenty-one young people of
the third order.
In the beginning of 1S09 sixty acres of land had already been cleared at Casey Creek, a quantity of grain sowed, and a great number of trees planted. Permanent settlement was about to be made here, when a fire destroyed in a few hours all the buildings of the new monastery. Dom Urbain was deeply affected by the misfortune, and thought only of going f U u here. An Irish gentleman by the name of Mul- amphy whom he had met in Baltimore, offered him tlic ownership of a habitation in Louisiana. Dom I frbain and Father Alary Joseph left together to visit this property. It pleased them, and they decided to leave Kentucky and Casey Creek.
In the "Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky. 17s7 1826" ran be read the unexception- able testimony which Bishop Spalding renders of the fervour of the religious during the whole lime they spent in Kentucky. Faithful to the rule of penance, they retrenched nothing from the austere practices of their holy state. The Rev. Father Charles Ne- rinckx. in a letter to Bishop Carroll, is not sparing in his praises of the Trappusts. though he blames certain details of administration which were the cause of their failure at Casey Creek. In the spring of 1S09 the community left for Louisiana and took up their abode at Florissant, the property of Mr. Mulamphy, some thirty miles west of St. Louis, on a hill which slopes towards the Missouri. But Father Urbain contem- plated the purchase of another property on the other side of the Mississippi, which wasofferedto him by M. Jarrot , former procurator of the seminary of St. Sulpice at Baltimore, who had established himself at Cahokia, six miles from St. Louis. In the first month of 1810 I )oin I'rbain bought on the prairie of " Looking Glass " the two highest of the forty mounds which formed the burial-ground of the Indians in the vicinity of Cahokia. known by the name of Indiana Mound.
" I coking Glass" was an immense tract of land in St. Clair County. Illinois, which, it is said, had served the savages for many generations as a burial-place for their dead. These people had built there gigantic monuments which rose up from a base of 160 feet in circumference to a height of more than 100 feet. The Trappists constructed several cabins on the smaller of the two mounds purchased by Dom I'rbain. reserv- ing the higher mound for the abbey which they in- tended to build later. But the new settlers soon h It the influence of the unhealthy climate. Several savage tribes who had attempted in the past to take up their abode there had been obliged to abandon the baking. None of the religious escaped the fever, but only one of them died. However, Monks' Mound, as it was afterwards named, presented great advantages. The city of St. Louis was only six or seven miles distant , all around were vast prairies or abundance of wood, and the waters of the Mississippi were so full offish that, to use the expression of Father I'rbain. "a blind man could not help but spear a big fish, if he tried". The lands were easy to cultivate and very fertile. The savages who made frequent incursions into the neighbourhood never molested the monks. Dom I'rbain had his rights of property con- firmed by Congress at Washington in March, 1810. He wished also to acquire 4000 acres of land in the neighbourhood of Monks' Mound. The president and a certain number of members of Congress were fa- vourable to him, but the hostility of several influential members, who feared to see this country peopled under the influence and direction of religious and Catholic priests, caused his petition to go over to the next session. While waiting, Dom I'rbain, struck by the sad condition of religion in the vicinity of St. Louis and in Illinois sent two of his religious to preach
the Gospel there — Father Man- Joseph and Father
Bernard, the latter a Canadian priest whom he had
brought with him from New York to Casey Creek.
These settled in a parish which was the most re-
nowned for its scandals. "There", says (laillardin
("Histoire de la Trappe", II, 285), "a husband had
just sold his wife for a bottle of whisky; the pur-
chaser in his turn sold her for a horse; and finalh she
was sold a third time for a yoke of oxen." But so
zealously did these missionaries labour there by word
and example that in a short time religion flourished.
Father Bernard, already advanced in age, after some
time succumbed to fatigue. To aid Father Mary
Joseph, Dom Urbain took upon himself the care of the
Christian people who were nearest to the monastery.
In 1812 a terrible plague visited the colony of the Monks' Mound. This fever, which desolated the country for two years, attacked the community and rendered it impossible for them to do any work. At the same time all necessaries were dear, and there was no money. Dom Urbain resolved to leave Monks' Mound. He sold all he possessed and transferred his community to Maryland. There he found on his ar- rival six other religious under the direction of Father Vincent de Paul, who had been sent from Bordeaux to America by Dom Augustin de Lestrange, and. hav- ing landed in Boston the 6 August, 1811, with two religious, had been joined in the following year by three lay brothers. (Father Vincent de Paul was a native of Lyons, born in 1769.) Dom I'rbain found the little band in the greatest misery. While waiting for better conditions, he settled them upon a little farm between Baltimore and Philadelphia, and con- ducted his own subjects to an island near Pittsburgh.
In the meanwhile Dom Augustin de Lestrange, pursued by the anger of Napoleon, who had even set a
Crice upon his head, arrived in New Vork in Decem- er, 1813. The Jesuits had just given up their foun dation in that city, and Dom Augustin took over the building they had used as a classical school and which was located where St. Patrick's Cathedral now stands in Fifth Avenue. Here, with Fathers I'rbain and Vincent de Paul, he began a little community which resumed the regular life and exerted on outsiders a salutary influence. They cared for a number of chil- dren, most of them orphans; Protestants were edified, and some conversions were made among them. The effort to establish a community was abandoned, how- ever, after two years' experience. Father Urbain made another attempt to found a colony upon a farm which was offered to him by M. Quesnet, Vicar-Gen- eral of Philadelphia.
Monaster? of I'etit-Clairvaux. — In 1814 Dom Augustin, after the abdication of Napoleon, resolved to return to France to re-establish there the Order of Citeaux. He authorized Father Mary Joseph to remain in America, to continue the evangelization of the savages. Two groups left in October, the one under t he conduct of Dom Vugust in, the other under that of Fat her Urbain. A third group set sail later from New York for Halifax, under the guidance of F'ather Vincent de Paul (May, 1815). Here he was obliged to wait fifteen days for the vessel which was to take him back to his native land, but the vessel sailed while Father Vincent de Pavil was engaged upon some business in town. He found himself without friends, without money, and in a country of which he knew nothing. But Father Vincent de Paul found there a vast field for the exercise of his zeal. He undertook to preach to the savages and. at the request of Mon- seigneur Lartigue, Bishop of Montreal, to found a monastery in Nova Scotia. He laboured eight years for the conversion of the infidels, and then, to carry out the latter project, he left for Bellefontaine in France (1823) and, the same year, returned to ica, bringing with him four religious, with whom he founded, in 1825, the monastery of Petit Clair-
