. In luminous foldings of the
watery meads.

Et, pendant qu'il allait voguant And as he journeys, drifting
a la derive, with its flow,
On aurait dit qu'au loin, les The forests lifting their glad
arbres de la rive, roofs aglow,
En arceaux parfumes penches sur In perfumed arches o'er his
son chemin, keel's swift swell,
Saluaient le heros dont Salute the hero, whose undaunted
l'energique audace soul
Venait d'inscrire encor le nom Had graved anew "LA FRANCE"
de notre race on that proud scroll
Aux fastes de l'esprit humain. Of human genius, bright,
imperishable.

Jolliet's companion, the Jesuit missionary, never realised his dream of
many years of usefulness in new missions among the tribes of the
immense region claimed by France. In the spring of 1675 he died by the
side of a little stream which finds its outlet on the western shore of
Lake Michigan, soon after his return from a painful journey he had
taken, while in a feeble state of health, to the Indian communities of
Kaskaskia between the Illinois and {183} Wabash rivers. A few months
later his remains were removed by some Ottawas, who knew and loved him
well, and carried to St. Ignace, where they were buried beneath the
little mission chapel. His memory has been perpetuated in the
nomenclature of the western region, and his statue stands in the
rotunda of that marble capitol which represents, not the power and
greatness of that France which he loved only less than his Church, but
the national development of those English colonies which, in his time,
were only a narrow fringe on the Atlantic coast, separated from the
great West by mountain ranges which none of the most venturesome of
their people had yet dared to cross.

The work that was commenced by Jolliet and Marquette, of solving the
mystery that had so long surrounded the Mississippi, was completed by
Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, a native of Rouen, who came to
Canada when quite a young man, and obtained a grant of land from the
Sulpician proprietors of Montreal at the head of the rapids, then known
as St. Louis. Like so many Canadians of those days he was soon carried
away by a spirit of adventure. He had heard of the "great water" in
the w