There was born in this village the historian [Footnote: Frederick
Jackson Turner.] who has written so well of the rise of that western
country that he has been called to the professorship of American history
at Harvard University, a literal son of the portage, who has rediscovered
the west to the world. And recently all the valley, and other valleys,
too, have been reading the stories of this place of portage (called, as I
have said, "Friendship Village"), written by a young woman whose windows
look out from her home upon the Wisconsin River not many paces from
Marquette's place of embarkation--a true daughter of the portage.
The French, who have given the new continent this portage path out of
Europe into the very heart of America, should read with some gratification
of the more intimate life that dwells there back of and in the midst of
the bustling, tireless, noisy industry of the valley.
"The long Caledonian hills" [the same which La Salle describes], "the four
rhythmic spans of the bridge" [a bridge of iron, not of vines and flowers
such as Chateaubriand describes], "the nearer river, the island where the
first birds build--these teach our windows the quiet and the opportunity
of the home town, its kindly brooding companionship, its doors to an
efficiency as intimate as that of fairy fingers.
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