The water path from Belle Isle,
Labrador, to the Gulf of Mexico was open, with only short portages at
Lachine and Niagara and of a few paces where the Fox all but touches the
Wisconsin, the Chicago the Des Plaines, or the St. Joseph the Kankakee. It
took almost a century and a half to open that way, but every league of it
was pioneered by the French, and if not for the French forever, is the
credit the less theirs?
When the "weathered voyagers" that day on the edge of the gulf planted the
cross, inscribed the arms of France upon a tree, buried a leaden plate of
possession in the earth and sang to the skies "The banners of heaven's
king advance," La Salle in a loud voice read the proclamation which I have
in part repeated. Thus "a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile,"
[Footnote: Parkman, "La Salle," p. 308.] in fact gave to France a river
and a stupendous territory, of which Parkman has made this description for
the title-deed: "The fertile plains of Texas, the vast basin of the
Mississippi, from its frozen springs to the sultry borders of the gulf;
from the wooded ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky
Mountains--a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts, and
grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand
warlike tribes.
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