hey loved it.

Soldiers, missionaries, governors of cities, explorers came year
after year from the time of Louis XIV, attracted by the chances
or the beauty of the unknown and the opportunity of increasing
their country's dominions, or of becoming famous, or of
instructing souls, and of dying, if death was to be met, bravely
and honorably. Very French they were, with all the qualities of
their race, and something else, perhaps, some of them, than the
qualities.

As they went down the great rivers from the regions of the
Canadian lakes to the Mexican sea they gave them French names,
and the reading of a map of that epoch reminds one of the
century of the Sun King. There he is with all his court, figured
in lands, cities, lakes, and rivers. Louisiana bears his own
name; Lake Pontchartrain the name of his minister for marine;
Fort Duquesne, the name of his famous sailor. There were also
the rivers Colbert and Seigneley, better known nowadays as
Mississippi and Illinois. One of the Great Lakes had been named
after the Duke of Orleans; another, the great Conde, the winner
of Rocroy; another after his brother, Prince de Conti; but this
last inland sea, as indeed most of the others, soon resumed its
Indian name, the homely name of Lake Erie, the Lake of the Cat.

Very French they were, those men--this Father Marquette, who,
with Joliet, first beheld the magnificent water that washes your
walls, the vast existence of which was then unknown, and who
explored it down to the country of the Arkansas; this Robert
Cavalier Sieur de la Salle, who had, long before our days, our
days' notions of the importance of great commercial routes;
whose purpose was to open one to China across this continent at
the very spot where your northern lines of railways have opened
theirs; who called his first house on American soil La China in
order that he might never forget his initial purpose. He died in
the quest, but not before he had explored the Mississippi down
to its mouth; not before he had ascertained that its source was
to the West, and that the river therefore could be used as a
guiding thread toward the Pacific; not before he had made the
first French settlement in this, your country, and given it a
name, which has not been replaced by another, and is its present
name of Louisiana.