The things we do!

What interests one who has lived
in that region, is to hear the first word of praise of the prairies
extending farther than the eye can see, interspersed with groves or with
lofty trees. [Footnote: "Jesuit Relations" (Thwaites), 59:103.]
I have spoken of the little river, dwindling into a creek of perplexed
channel before the trail is found that ties the two great valleys
together. One cannot miss it now, for when I last passed over it it was
being paved, or macadamized, and a steam-roller was doing in a few days
what the moccasined or sandalled feet of the first travellers there would
not have accomplished in a thousand thousand years. I shall speak later of
what has grown upon this narrow isthmus (now crossed not merely by trail
and highway, but by canal as well), but I now must hasten on where the
impatient priest and his sturdy, practical companion are leading, toward
the Wisconsin.
Nicolet may have put his boat in this same Wisconsin River, but if he did
he did not go far below the portage.


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