Wisconsin reached the Mississippi river and explored it as far down as the mouth of the Arkansas river. In 1680, Hennepin explored the Illinois river and the upper Mississippi, but that he explored the Mississippi from the mouth of the Illinois to the Gulf, as he afterwards claimed, is not believed by reliable historians. As to the work of La Salle, it may be regarded as established that he discovered and explored the Ohio river, that he first explored the Mississippi from the mouth of the Arkansas to the Gulf, that he first discovered the mouths of the Mississippi and first took formal political possession of the vast region extending from the Great Lakes to the Gulf and from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains in the name of the French King. While the inscription thus fails in entire accuracy it is nevertheless in the main true, a noble and impressive summary of a great life, in its objective aspects and results. On the subjective side it falls far short of giving an adequate impression of the qualities and characteristics of the man himself. Of this interior picture, an American historian has given us the form and lineaments. Of course I allude to Mr. Parkman's La Salle, a memorial to the great explorer destined to outlive bronze and marble.

To an assembly of scholars in the country which owes so much to La Salle, it is not just to think of him only as an explorer. He was, in fact, a statesman as well. In the first place, he anticipated the development of international law in adopting the principle that a title by discovery needs to be perfected by actual occupation. In the next place, he first conceived the idea of the commercial value of the Mississippi, and its indispensable importance to the growth and development of the great West. This idea, fully comprehended by Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, led to the acquisition of Louisiana by the United States by the treaty of April 30, 1803. Thus the Great Republic entered into his self-sacrificing labors. His original project was to ascertain whether the river which he supposed to be but the

continuation of the Ohio, emptied into the Atlantic Ocean, or the Gulf of Mexico, or the Gulf of California. His own opinion was that it discharged into the South Sea and thus would open a passage to the East. When he had satisfied himself that the river discharged into the Gulf of Mexico, he ceased to be a visionary and became a statesman. He saw that this and not the route through Canada was the destined route for the trade likely to spring up from the settlement of the great West. He therefore proposed to effect a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi river and there to construct forts to guard its entrance. He had already established his colony on the Illinois river, erected there Fort St. Louis and begun to form the vast confederacy of the Indian tribes by which it was hoped to consolidate the power of France, to attract thither, as to a vast emporium, the fur trade of all that great region of which the Mississippi was the outlet to the sea, and to furnish a military force for the conquest of the silver mines of Mexico. Was there ever a more magnificent dream of empire than that which comprised as an outlying domain of France, Canada, the Great Lakes and the region whereof La Salle took possession in the name of the French King? In the language of Parkman, "America owes him an enduring memory, for in this masculine figure she sees the pioneer who guided her to the possession of her richest heritage."

THE SITE OF THE FIRST COLLEGE BUILDING AT CAMBRIDGE.

BY ANDREW MCFARLAND DAVIS.

Ir is a singular fact that knowledge of the exact site of the first college building has been lost. We know where Governor Dudley's house stood; a tablet marks the spot where Stephen Daye lived; knowledge has been preserved of the sites of the first meeting-house and the first school-house in Cambridge, but when we come to the first college building, by far the most interesting building to the historian and antiquary that has ever been erected in Cambridge, we cannot positively state that the spot where it stood is to be found within the limits of the present college yard. The probability that this was so is great and almost amounts to a certainty. If we can fix the title to any portion of the land which now constitutes the college yard, in the name of the college in 1638, it is to that spot we should direct our search for traces of the lost building.

The early records of Cambridge are contained in two volumes respectively devoted to "Town" and "Proprietary" records. The proprietary records do not mention any grant or title which can be construed as directly lodged in the college in 1638, but in the town records, in a list of the grants which had been made at that time out of the Ox pasture, mention is made of two and two-thirds acres to the Professor" for a school or college. So far as is known this grant was the only one at that date through which title to any land had been given to the college. Do these two and two-thirds acres constitute a part of the college yard?

In 1848, Samuel A. Eliot published a history of Harvard College. An attempt was made at that time to trace back the titles of the several lots which make up the college yard, and a map was appended to the publication, on which the approximate boundaries of the lots as originally granted were indicated. The history of some of these lots was sufficiently well known to disclose their situation and their boundaries with reasonable certainty. These having been identified, the location of other lots concerning which less was known, was determined with approximate accuracy. The plotting of these boundaries left a lot of two and a quarter acres on the plan, which fronted on Kirkland street, or the old Charlestown highway. This lot extended back to the middle of the quadrangle and comprehended within its bounds a portion of the present Cambridge street. The grant of two and two-thirds acres to the professor, which has been already alluded to, was accepted by the maker of the map as the probable source of title for this lot. The author of the history says: "The appropriation of two and two-thirds acres to the school appears on the plan reduced to two and a quarter acres; and it must be regarded as a pretty close approximation, considering the vagueness of the description given of so many of the adjoining lots, the prevailing inaccuracy of measurement in those days (before land was sold by the square foot and before square inches had become appreciable), and making allowance for the quantity which has been taken by public authority for widening the streets, which in the seventeenth century were merely lanes."

If this identification with the lot on the plan, of the grant to the professor in 1638, is correct, it is of great importance in connection with our search for the site of the original building, because in that event we have established the location of a lot, the title to which was in the college in 1638 and has remained in its unbroken possession until today. Moreover this grant furnished the only title, so far as