Arrangements were made for the transportation of my new colleagues across the plains at government expense; but I took Ben Holladay’s coach at Kansas City, and crossed the continent to Sacramento, and thence by river steamer to San Francisco.  The Indian goods had been shipped to Yuma.

In San Francisco I met my old friend, J. Ross Browne, who had just returned from Europe, and invited him to accompany me through Arizona at my expense.  He afterwards wrote an account of the journey, “Wanderings in the Apache Country,” published by Harpers.

Archbishop Alemany, whom I had known as a parish priest in Kentucky, called upon me in San Francisco, and asked if I would take a couple of priests down to Arizona, to restore the service among the Indians at the old Mission of San Xavier del Bac on the Santa Cruz, to which I assented with great pleasure.

After a voyage by sea from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I presented my orders from the Secretary of War to the commanding officer at Drumm Barracks for an escort of cavalry and transportation to Arizona; and prepared for the journey across the Colorado Desert.

We arrived at Yuma just before Christmas, and during Christmas week regaled the Yumas, Cocopas, and neighboring tribes of Indians with their first presents from Uncle Sam.  After distributing the Indian goods at Yuma, we proceeded upon the Gila River some two hundred miles to the Pima village, where my old friends, the Pima Indians, gave a warm welcome, not entirely on account of the Indian goods.

At the Pima villages one Sunday, I requested the priests to celebrate the mass, and tell the Indians something about God,—­remembering my own failure in teaching theology.  The troops were drawn up, the Indians assembled, and Father Bosco through my interpreter preached the first sermon the Pima Indians ever heard.

At dinner, the good Father took me by the ear, and said, “What for you make me preach to these savages?—­they squat on the ground, and laugh at me like monkeys.”

The next place for the distribution of Indian goods was at the Mission of San Xavier del Bac, three leagues south of Tucson, among the Papagos, a christianized branch of the great Pima tribe.  The Papago chiefs were my old friends and acquaintances, and received the priests with fireworks and illuminations.  They knew of our coming, and had swept the church and grounds clean, and ornamented the altar with mistletoe.

The Indians had been expecting the priests for many years,——­

  For the Jesuits told them long ago
  As sure as the water continued to flow,
  The sun to shine, and the grass to grow,
  They would come again to the Papago.

I installed the priests in the old Mission buildings, and turned over the goods intended for the Papagos for distribution at their convenience.