They lived in the midst of spiritual destitution. The French pioneers of the Western country had planted the faith at St. Louis and some other prominent points, but they had left few or no traces in the vast tracts of territory surrounding the earlier settlements, and to most of the country people the Roman Catholic Church was no better than a sort of aggravated pagan imposture. Protestant preachers used to show themselves at the very doors of the churches and challenge the priests to come out and be confuted. Wherever the Lazarists travelled, they were looked at with the most intense curiosity. Very few of the settlers had ever seen a priest before. The Catholics, scattered here and there, had generally been deprived, for years, of Mass and the sacraments, and their children were growing up utterly ignorant of religion. Mr. Timon was accustomed to make a regular missionary circuit of fifteen or twenty miles around the Barrens in company with Father Odin, afterward Archbishop of New Orleans. The duty of the sub-deacon was to preach, catechise, and instruct. Sometimes they had no other shelter than the woods, and no other food than wild berries. At a settlement called Apple Creek, they made a chapel out of a large pig-pen, cleaning it out with their own hands, building an altar, and so decorating the poor little place with fresh boughs that it became the wonder of the neighborhood. In 1824, Messrs. Odin and Timon made a long missionary tour on horseback. Mr. Deuther says they went to "New Madrid, _Texas_," and thence as far as "the Port of Arkansas." New Madrid, of course, is in Missouri, and the Port of Arkansas undoubtedly means Arkansas Post, in the State of Arkansas, which could not very well be reached by the way of Texas. Along the route they travelled--where they had to swim rivers, flounder through morasses, and sleep in the swamps--no priest had been seen for more than thirty-five years. Their zeal, intelligence, graceful and impassioned speech, and modest manners, seem to have made a great impression on the settlers. They had the satisfaction of disarming much prejudice, receiving some converts, and administering the sacraments; and, after an interesting visit to an Indian tribe on the Arkansas River, they returned to the Barrens. About this time (in 1825), Mr. Timon was promoted to the priesthood and appointed a professor at the seminary. His missionary labors were now greatly increased. Mr. Deuther tells some interesting anecdotes of his tours, which curiously illustrate the state of religion at that time in the West. One day, Father Timon was summoned to Jackson, Missouri, to visit a murderer under sentence of death. With some difficulty he got admission to the jail, but a crowd of men, led by a Baptist minister named Green, who was also editor of the village newspaper, entered with him. The prisoner was found lying on a heap of straw and chained to a post. The hostile mob refused to leave the priest alone