The
crescent moon dropped behind the shadows that now line the portage "like a
sombre forest," but it is only a few steps through the darkness back into
the light and noise of the city of more than two million people.
Out of the black loam of this dark portage path fringed by marshes, in the
field of wild onions, the newest of the world's great cities has sprung
and spread with a promise that exceeds any other on the face of the
planet, though within the life of men still living it was but a stretch of
lake shore, a marshy plain with a path from its miniature river or creek
toward the crescent moon.
A metropolis was doubtless predestined on or near the very site of Chicago
by natural conditions and the peopling of the lands to the northwest; but
Louis Joliet was its first prophet. The inscription on the tablet at the
foot of the black cross recites that in crossing this site Joliet
recommended it for its natural advantages and as a place of first
settlement. And he first suggested the lakes-to-the-gulf waterway--a
prospect of which La Salle speaks with disfavor but which over two hundred
years later was in some measure realized.
Pages:
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387