his second journey to the Mississippi in 1687, he had with him
his brother and two nephews. The newcomers soon discovered that
the region was not the metallic eldorado they had heard of it in
Europe, but that it was a matchless agricultural country, and
they began cutting the trees and tilling the ground, with none
of the modern instruments and helps, no harvesting machines from
"Chicago," as the then desert spot was called in their days; no
horses, no horned cattle. They led, indeed not in fiction, but
in truth--and long before the famous "Mariner of York" was
wrecked by the Orinoco River--the life of Robinson Crusoe.
Unknown to Europe, far from any neighbors, by the shade of the
pathless forest, they tried their best. They died, many of them
obscurely, leaving no name to be engraved on the bronze tables
of history, but leaving better than a mere name--families, many
of which still subsist; better than families--examples of
earnestness and endurance, creating a tradition which will never
die out, "Rien ne se perd."

The greatness of their difficulties, the scantiness of their
means, the wisdom of many of their views are equally striking.
More than one did their utmost to teach and improve their Indian
neighbor. They forbade at an early date the selling to them of
the destructive "fire water." Cadillac did so from the first;
the Marquis de Vaudreuil reissued the same orders later. They
soon discovered that the northern regions alone could produce
wheat enough to feed the whole country, "though it should be
quite peopled down to the sea." The question of labor was one of
prominent difficulty and importance. Should it be hired labor of
freemen or the compulsory labor of the imported negro? On this,
one of those early French explorers, Charlevoix, summed up his
opinion in the following memorable sentence: "Hired servants
should be preferred. When the time of their service is expired
they become inhabitants and increase the number of the King's
natural subjects, whereas the slaves are always strangers. And
who can be assured that by continually increasing in our
colonies they will not one day become formidable enemies? Can we
depend upon slaves who are only attached to us by fear and for
whom the very land where they are born has not the dear name of
mother country?"