The things we do!

It is a rivalry between the old Champlain paths and the La Salle paths,
with just an intimation from those who look far into the future that a new
water path still farther north--of which Radisson gave some premonition--
may carry the wheat of the far northwest from Winnipeg beyond Superior and
beyond the courses of the Mississippi up to Hudson Bay and across the
ocean to European ports, brought a thousand miles nearer.
This is but the merest intimation of the prophetic service of the water
pioneers. And when the prophecy of these pioneers, as interpreted in terms
of steam and locks and dams unknown to them, is fulfilled, it is not
beyond thinking that a captain of a seagoing vessel of ten or twenty
thousand tons from Havre or Cherbourg may some day be calling in deep
voice (as last summer in a room on the twenty-ninth floor of a Chicago
"sky-scraper" I heard a local descendant of the _Griffin_ screeching) for
the lifting of the bridges that will open the way to the Mississippi, the
heart of America.


Pages:
300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324