The labors of this mission were so light that it was more like holiday than work for us. The presence of a number of very agreeable and intelligent Catholic gentlemen and ladies, who were visitors in the place, and some of whom were old friends, added very much to the liveliness of the mission, and to our own enjoyment of its peculiar attendant circumstances. One of these was the Abbé Le Blond, a dear friend of ours and of all who knew him, a priest of Montreal, who was gradually dying of consumption, yet full of vivacity and activity, improving the remnant of his days by his labors of love and zeal, and his works of charity in different parts [of] the South where he passed his winters. He died eventually in Rome. Another was Lieutenant McDonald, of the British Royal Navy, and also, for some time before leaving England, a captain in the Queen's Guards, a Highland gentleman of a family that has always been true to the faith, also since deceased. The quiet city of St. Augustine, as well as all the other scenes and places where we passed that winter on our missionary tour, has since then been visited by the desolating breath of war. Probably all is changed, and greater changes yet are coming with the new issues of peace--changes which, there is reason to hope, will advance both the religious and temporal welfare of the people. Florida may yet become a populous State, and the handful of Catholics in it swell into a number sufficient to make a flourishing diocese. {167} Immediately after the close of the mission, F. Baker proceeded by sea to Charleston where he met the other two missionaries who had been at work in Georgia, and commenced a mission in the cathedral of that city. His two companions were detained for a time in St. Augustine by the sudden and severe illness of one of them, and they went on a little later, returning by the same leisurely route by which they came to Savannah, and thence to Charleston, where the mission was already in progress. Charleston possessed three Catholic churches, and its Catholic population numbered from five to six thousand. All the congregations were invited to the mission, and a large number of them did attend from St. Mary's and St. Patrick's, together with the whole body of the cathedral parish. The same work performed by the missionaries in Savannah had been gone through in Charleston, in scouring the lanes and alleys of the city to bring up the stragglers, and the great cathedral was accordingly crowded, morning and night. First of all, two hundred bright and well-instructed children received communion in a body, and afterward, through the course of the mission, three thousand adults, among whom were twenty converts to the faith.