The things we do!

It was not such music,
at any rate, as that of Orpheus, to make plain men grow "heroes at the
sound." Doubtless no one felt himself a hero. The only intimation of any
consciousness of a high mission comes from Hennepin, who, when the
_Griffin_, some days later, was ploughing peacefully through the straits
that led to the Mer Douce--"verdant prairies, dotted with groves and
bordered with lofty forests" on either side, "herds of deer and flocks of
swans and wild turkeys" within sight, and the "bulwarks plentifully hung
with game"--wrote: "Those who will one day have the happiness to possess
this fertile and pleasant strait, will be very much obliged to those who
have shown them the way."
"Very much obliged"? No, Hennepin! Of the hundreds of thousands who now
pass through or across those straits every year, or of those thousands who
possess its shores, not a hundred, I venture to say, remember "those who
showed the way"! They have even forgotten "that the first European voice
that Niagara ever heard was French"! Ste.


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