Think of what it was that Father Orin and his partner did! They had
ecclesiastical jurisdiction over a strip of country which was more than
fifty miles wide and little less than four hundred miles long. This lay
on both sides of the Ohio River, much of it being the trackless forest,
so that Father Orin and Toby used the Shawnee Crossing oftener than the
Shawnees themselves. They went unharmed, too, where no other pioneers
ever dared go. Some mysterious power seemed to protect them, as the rude
cross drawn on a cabin door is said to have saved the inmates from the
savages. Father Orin and Toby thus travelled about two hundred miles
each week all the year through, without stopping for heat or cold. There
was only one church when they first began their labors, and this was the
little log chapel; but the members of that small and widely scattered
congregation were served with the offices of their religion by the
priest at many private houses which were far apart and called
"stations." There were about thirty of these in Kentucky, several in
Indiana and Illinois, and one or two in Tennessee, and Father Orin and
Toby visited them all, some as often as once a month and the others as
often as possible.
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