The things we do!

The town, Nouvelle Chartres, with all its color and gayety, has
become a corn field, and only the magazine of the fort remains, hidden, a
gunshot from the river, among the weeds, bushes, vines, and trees.
Fourteen miles below is the site of the oldest French village in the upper
valley. But the river was jealous and took it all, foundation and roof, to
itself. The charms of old Kaskaskia, the sometime capital of all that
region, are "one with Nineveh and Tyre." Not a vestige is left of its
first days and only a broken structure or two of its later glory.
Nor is there any other trace, so far as I could learn, anywhere down the
winding stream till one reaches New Orleans. The red sun-worshippers in
their white garments--familiar of old to the French--even they have
followed their divinity toward its setting, and only among those with
African shadows in their faces do they still sing, as I have heard, of the
"brave days of D'Artaguette." The monuments do not remember beyond the
bravery and carnage of the Civil War, or at farthest beyond the War of
1812.


Pages:
123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147