The things we do!

" [Footnote: "Democracy in America," 1:22,
21, 20. New York, 1898.]
And it was still another Frenchman who first gave to the world an accurate
description of the sources of the river. On his own account, Nicollet,
sometime professor in the College Louis le Grand, set out in 1831 to
explore the river from its mouth to the source. He spent five years in
these regions which he described as "a grand empire possessing the
grandest natural limits on the earth." He then returned to a little
Catholic college in Baltimore as a teacher, but the United States
Government, hearing of his valuable service, commissioned him to make
another expedition that would enable him to complete his map of the region
of the sources. What he then accomplished has given him "distinct and
conspicuous place among the explorers of the Mississippi." His map shows
myriad lakes in the region of the sources (where the slightest jar of
earth might turn in other directions the water of these brimming bowls),
so many indeed, that there would seem to be only lake and marsh and
savannas.


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