r look upon the regal St. Lawrence, without a
sort of Indian Summer regret filling my sky. The French as explorers
were magnificent.

And Frenchmen in those days of their discoveries were eminently devout,
either in fact or in habits of thought--sometimes one, sometimes
both--as may be inferred from the religiosity of the names they so
often gave the places of their discovery. In some instances, this fact
is to be explained by recalling that Jesuits were the explorers; but
matters conspired to one effect, namely, starring the path of their
discoveries by "saints," as with the Spaniards, as has been mentioned.
From the St. Lawrence, which is the noblest stream on which my eyes
have ever rested, to the old Saint Louis at the Mississippi's mouth, it
seems a march of palmers; for at every halt they planted a fleur de lis
and a cross. In this nomenclature, despite ourselves, is a witchery,
under whose spell I plead guilty to falling. On the Atlantic side of
Newfoundland is Notre Dame Bay, while beside the island northward the
majestic St. Lawrence mingles the lakes with the sea. Toil your way up
the river, as in the long ago the discoverers did, and see on either
shore the sacred names: St. Charles, St. Johns, St. Paul's Bay, and on
and on, across or through the continent, St. Mary's, St. Joseph, St.
Paul, St. Louis. So the voyager made journey. Lake Champlain tells
the inroad of a brave French discoverer. Au Sable chasm answers for it
that here, on this black water, the ubiquitous voyager has floated.
Vermont and Montpelier say, "Remember who has been here." Detroit (the
strait) is a tollgate for the French highway. Marquette, Joliet, La
Salle, wake from the dead a trinity of heroic discoverers. Than La
Salle, America never had a more valorous and indefatigable explorer.
Hennepin minds us of the discoverer of Niagara. Sault Ste. Marie, Eau
Claire, St. Croix River, the Dalles, are old camp-grounds of these
wanderers. In Indiana, Vincennes is one of the oldest French
settlements; Terre Haute (high ground) and La Porte are sign-manuals of
sunny France. St. Joseph, in Missouri, and Des Moines (swamp land), in
Iowa, and the name of a beautiful river in Kansas, Marais des Cygnes
(the river of swans), tell the trail of the old French trapper. Where
has he not been? Going farther westward, find in Wyoming the Belle
Fourche River; in Idaho are St. Joseph Creek, and Coeur d'Alene Lake,
and Lake Pend d'Oreille; in Wash