The sixty
million people will not be resisted permanently by the sixty million
horses of the river, though the strength of the horses be driven by all
the clouds that the gulf sends up the valley to its aid. Some day the
great, free River Colbert will run vexed of impenetrable, unyielding walls
to the sea. Its "titanic ambition for quiet flowing" down this beautiful,
gently sloping valley to the gulf (which, as one has said, "has been its
longing through ages") will have been turned to human ministry. The spirit
of the great water will have become as patient, as thoughtless of its own
wild comfort or ambitions as that of the priest who dedicated it to the
honor of the mother of the most patient of men.
CHAPTER VI
THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE AND THE DREAM OF ITS REVIVAL
The readers who have through these chapters been companions of Champlain,
La Salle, Joliet, Marquette, and others in the discovery of the mighty
rivers and the conquest of the mighty vastnesses of the new world will
have, if they continue, yet before them even harder and more disheartening
ventures, as La Salle himself had that April day in 1682, when he turned
from the column which he had planted in sight of the Gulf of Mexico, four
thousand miles from the Cape of Labrador, and began to drive his canoes up
the river which he had traced forever, if too tortuously, on the maps of
the earth.
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