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carouse. When he heard that I was coming, he planted himself, cross-legged, on a sort of low platform, at the bottom of his hut, after the manner of the Grand Turk, and there I found him. He talked little, and appeared much to affect a proud gravity, which, however, he carried off indifferently."

The pious father also gives us an interesting account of some games he witnessed here, among the Miamis, all of which helps us to an insight of their way of life. Thus he begins:

"This day the Pottawatomies were come to play the game of straws with the Miamis. The game was played in the chief's cabin and on the open ground before it. The straws used are little twigs of the bigness of a wheat stalk, and no more than two inches long. They take a bunch of these, generally containing a hundred and one straws, but always an odd number. After giving them a good mixing up, with many contortions of their bodies and many invocations of their favorite genii, the whole are divided into packets of ten, with a sort of awl or pointed bone. Every one takes his packet at hazard, and the one who gets the eleven straws gains a certain number of points. Sixty or eighty play the game at a time.”

A PRAIRIE PORTAGE

A MONK, who is making the long journey from Michilimackinac to New Orleans, is writing to a certain duchess, who is probably at that hour fast asleep in her chamber at Paris. Let us follow him:

"I believe I let you know in my last that there was a choice of two routes open to me, in going to the Illinois.

The first would be to go back to Lake Michigan, coast the southern shore, and then ascend the little Chicago River. After going up for five or six leagues, one passes into the Illinois by means of two portages, the longest being no more than a league and a quarter over. But as this river is yet only a brook at this place, they told me that at this time of year I would not find water enough there to float my canoe. So, I have taken the other route, which also has its inconveniences, and is not nearly as agreeable, but is more sure.

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Yesterday I set out from the fort of the St. Joseph, and I ascended this river about six leagues. I then went ashore at the right, walked a league and a quarter, at first along the river bank, then across country in an immense prairie, all sowed over with little clumps of trees, which give it a very beautiful effect. This is called the Bull's Head Prairie, because they found there once the skull of a bull of immense size. And why should there not be also giants among the animals? I camped at a very pretty spot called the Foxes Fort, because the Foxes, that is to say the Outagamis, had there, not long ago, a village fortified in their manner.

"This morning I have again travelled a league of prairie, with my feet almost always in the water; then I came to a sort of bog, which communicated with several others of different sizes, the largest not being a hundred paces round. These are the springs of a river called Theakiki, which our Canadians have corrupted into Kiakiki (Kankakee). Theak means a wolf, I do not recollect in what language, but this river bears this name because the Mahingans, who are also called Wolves, took refuge here in days gone by.

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We put our canoe, which two men carried up to this

time, in the second of the sources, and all got into it, but there was hardly water enough to float us. Ten men could make in two days a canal here, straight and navigable, which would save a great deal of trouble, and ten or twelve leagues of road, for the river, at its source, is so narrow, and it is necessary continually to make such short turns, that one risks staving his canoe every instant, as has just happened to us.

"During the following days we paddled steadily on from morning till night, always favored by the current, which is quite strong, and sometimes, also, by the wind. In fact we went over a good deal of ground, though actually making very little progress, since at the end of ten or twelve leagues we would find ourselves so near our last camp that we might be seen and even heard from one to the other, at least with a speaking-trumpet."

THE FRENCH ON THE MISSISSIPPI AND THE WABASH, 1718

EARLY in the eighteenth century, a group of settlements sprung up on the banks of the Mississippi, destined to build greater than they knew. It was most advantageously planted, where traders, going or coming between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, might call for supplies or rest from their fatigues; yet its remoteness made the attempt a bold one.

As we have already seen, La Salle's discoveries had led to his naming all the boundless regions drained by the Mississippi, Louisiana. In those days a discovery of the main course of a river extended to every foot of country it watered; so that Louisiana really included

an empire more vast than La Salle had even dreamed of, enthusiast as he was.

The first steps toward taking possession of Louisiana -slow and feeble steps they were, too-came from the Gulf coast, gradually working their way up from Biloxi to New Orleans, founded in 1718 by Bienville; then advancing to Natchez and the Arkansas. The trade, however, had been farmed out, first to Anthony Crozat, then to John Law,' whose gigantic schemes and no less gigantic failures are known to history as the Mississippi Bubble.

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However, an impression had been made at one end of the line. If, now, a like beginning should be made at the other end, the work of colonizing would go on twice as fast. But to do this effectively it would be necessary to draw upon Canada, both for recruits and munitions, that colony being so much more easily reached through its western posts, as well as so much more populous.

It should be borne in mind that, from its first founding, Louisiana had been set off from Canada, or rather from the all-embracing New France, to be a colony by itself, under rulers of its own. To colonies so remote a political separation was, indeed, imperatively demanded. But together they now held command of the great waterway of the continent, as the lamented La Salle had foreseen-indeed predicted.

Meantime (1717), all the Illinois country had been added to Louisiana, as legitimately belonging to it, rather than to Canada, and a local governor sent there the very next year with men to begin the usual fort. The boundaries of this government were, some years later, fixed along the highlands of the Wabash, to which

the French gave the so-descriptive name of Terre Haute,3 from which that of one of Indiana's most prosperous cities is taken.

Placed thus midway between Montreal and New Orleans, it was most essential that this Illinois colony should be made self-sustaining, in part at least should be producers as well as consumers.1 The choice of a location was, therefore, all-important, as this condition was unusual to such undertakings, so far. Indeed, it seems to

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point to the dawning of a new era in French colonization enterprises, and was, no doubt, so regarded.

Where and what was this land of new promise and new fortunes ?

There is found, bordering the eastern shore of the great river, like embroidery the hem of a rich mantle, a strip of land from three to six miles wide and eighty long, quite level, and of astonishing fertility. In fact, there are two levels. The low level, next the Mississippi, is always found heavily fringed with forests of

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