While Fathers Blanchet and Demers and their associates were busily engaged in the Willamette Valley, Father de Smet had come in 1840 into the Flathead country, in what is now Northern Idaho. His first mission was St. Mary's, on the Flathead River, founded by the planting of the cross on September 24, 1841. Other missions were soon established on Coeur d'Alene Lake and Pend Oreille Lake. Branching out from them were missions in Colville, and ultimately in the Walla Walla, Yakima, Wenatchee, and Chelan valleys. De Smet greatly overestimated the number of Indians, reckoning those in Oregon at one hundred and ten thousand. He numbered his converts by the thousands. So pressing seemed the needs that in 1843, he went to Europe for reinforcements. He was very successful in his quest, returning the following year in the ship _L'Indefatigable_, from Antwerp, accompanied by four fathers, six sisters, and several lay brothers. He gives a thrilling account of his entrance of the Columbia River on July 31, 1844. He vividly portrays the terrors of the bar with the mighty surges dashing across the entrance. The captain did not understand the channel and became diverted from the true course, which was then by the north channel, and got into the south. The latter is now the main channel, but then was dangerous. De Smet piously regards their escape from wreck as due to the special interposition of divine providence, and to the favour extended to them because of its being the day sacred to St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of their order. De Smet's brilliant and poetical descriptions of the grandeur of the river and its forests denote a keen appreciation of nature and a facile pen. Demers, De Smet, and Blanchet entered upon their work with such energy that by the time of De Smet's report in 1844 there had been established four dioceses in the region tributary to the Columbia; viz., Oregon City, Walla Walla, Fort Hall, and Colville. Oregon City was the Metropolitan See and in charge of Rev. F. N. Blanchet. Walla Walla was under the direction of Rev. Magloire Blanchet, who at that date had charge also of Forts Hall and Colville. Eleven chapels had been erected at different points; five in the Willamette Valley, one at Vancouver, one on the Cowlitz, one on Coeur d'Alene Lake, one on Pend Oreille Lake, one at Kettle Falls on the Columbia near Colville, and one near Calispell among the Flatheads. There were three schools; one being St. Mary's among the Flatheads, while at St. Paul's on the Willamette, there were two, a college for boys, still the site of a college, and a girls' academy. Twelve clergymen were engaged at that time in the work, and the number was soon increased to twenty-six by another reinforcement from Europe. With the reinforcement were also seven female teachers.