Impelled by this spirit of enterprise in search of Truth, Captain Willard Glazier has discovered, at last, the true source of our grand and peerless river, the "Father of Waters," down which he has floated and paddled in frail canoes, a distance of more than three thousand miles, to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. One of these canoes is now placed here in your view, and will be presented to-night by its navigator to our Historical Society. Nearly two hundred years ago La Salle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi, yet only now in this year of grace, 1881, was ascertained its true fountain source. This, the latest achievement of Captain Glazier, is only in the natural course of his antecedents. Born as late as 1841, he has already gone through the experiences of the Adamic labors of a tiller of the soil, the hard toils of the student and of the successful teacher; of the dashing and brilliant cavalry officer in the Union army through the whole period of our late war, from its disastrous beginning to its successful ending; of the sufferings of capture and imprisonment in the notorious "Libby" and other prisons, and of a daring and perilous escape from their cruel walls; of an adventurous tourist on horseback through the most civilized and savage portions of our continent, beginning with the feet of his horse in the waters of the Atlantic, and ending with their splash in the waters of the Pacific. He delivered lectures along his route wherever a civilized audience could be collected, and suffered capture by the Indians, with all its sensational romance and hideous prospects. From the material of these antecedents he has written and published several books of singular interest and national value. From this brief sketch we would naturally expect to see a stalwart man, massive and powerful in form and muscle. Our conception of men of big deeds is that they also are big. But David was a stripling when he slew Goliath of Gath. Napoleon was characterized by the society ladies of the period of his early career as "Puss in Boots." Our own Fremont and Eads would seem at sight capable of only the ordinarily exposed duties of life. Of like physique is the subject of this introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now my pleasant privilege to introduce to your acquaintance Captain Willard Glazier as the lecturer for the evening.