There are memories there on every side, in their very houses and
habits--yet memories which I fear are beginning to fade with the
allurements of the land of hope to the far west and the northwest of
Canada--the "land of hope," the new frontier of America, now of such
interest to the people of that other valley, the Mississippi, which was
once separated from Canada by no boundaries save watersheds, and these so
low that there was reciprocity of their waters.
But even if I could keep you longer I am thinking that I should have asked
you to spend it where there are fewer memories than in Canada, in the
valley where the old French names, if kept at all, are often obscured in a
new orthography or a different pronunciation. Up in the boundary of waters
between the two lands there is a lighthouse on an island called
"Skilligallee." I was a long time in discovering that this meaningless
euphonic name was but the memory of the Isle aux Galets--the island of the
pebbles. So have the memories been lost in tongues that could not easily
frame to pronounce the words they found when they entered that farther
valley where France's pioneering is almost forgotten, but where France
should be best remembered.
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