La Salle may even have walked over
this very path only a year or two before. But, after all, it is only a
question as to which son of France it was, for we know of a certainty that
on a day in June of 1673 Joliet and Marquette did let their canoes yield
to the current of this broad, tranquil stream after their days of paddling
up the "stream of the wild rice."
I have walked in the wide valley of the Wisconsin River and have seen
through the haze of an Indian summer day the same dim bluffs that
Marquette looked upon, and by night the light of the same stars that
Marquette saw reflected from its surface. But having never ridden upon its
waters, I take the description of one who has followed its course more
intimately if not more worshipfully. "They glided down the stream," he
writes, "by islands choked with trees and matted with entangling grape-
vines, by forests, groves and prairies, the parks and pleasure-grounds of
a prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad bare sand-bars; under
the shadowing trees between whose tops looked down from afar the bold brow
of some woody bluff.
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