"
The first sound of the overmountain migration of which I spoke above was
of the stealthy step of the hunter, yet back of that for a century was the
scarcely audible plash of the paddle and the answering swirl of the water.
But as in overmountain migration the noisy wheel soon followed the foot,
so in the other the noiseless sail followed the swishing paddle.
The city of Paris bears a sailing ship upon her shield, though she sits a
hundred miles or more from the sea. Whatever the significance of that
symbol has been to the people of France, it has a peculiar appropriateness
(probably never realized before) in the fact that the iron, cordage, and
anchors for the first vessel which sailed upon the inland waters of the
new world were carried out from France to the first shipyard, beyond the
mountains, in the midst of the forest, above the mighty Falls of Niagara.
Jason of Thessaly, sailing for the Golden Fleece in Colchis, and braving
the fiery breath of the dragon, did not undertake a more perilous or more
difficult labor than he who bore from the banks of the Seine the equipment
of a vessel in which to bring back to France, as he hoped, the fleece of
the forest and the plain.
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