Marie, and there established the first white settlement in the present State of Michigan, set out, with Joliet and two tawny interpreters, to trace the mysteries of the Great River of America. Sailing down the Wisconsin River, and reaching in a few days that wide-rolling flood which we now call the Mississippi River, and floating on its rough but kindly bosom for one hundred and eighty miles, they landed on its western bank, and, crossing a narrow portage, struck, without hurting, the Des Moines River. They were the first white men in Iowa, and next to De Soto, one hundred and thirty-one years before them, the only pale children that had ever looked into the wrinkled face of the Father of Waters. Here they were met by four red men, who, in answer to their inquiries, loftily proclaimed themselves to be “Illinois” or “Men.” The spirit of Chicago, thus filtrated, antedated its own settlement over one hundred and fifty years. Re-embarking, these Gallic adventurers swept on down the rapidly rushing river unsnagged; passed in safety the large open mouth of the Missouri; overlooked the future site of St. Louis; refused to listen to the temptation which beckoned them to ascend the Ohio to the future metropolis of bacon; floated along over the rusting armor of De Soto, without diving for it, keeping a good lookout on the dangerous territory of Arkansas on their right, and Mississippi on their left, until they at last reached the point where the Arkansas River hastens to throw its burden of earth and water upon the back of the giant stream. Here they found Indians with European weapons of steel; and they returned back, retracing their courageous steps homeward. Marquette, let us add, preached for two years to the wild men in and around the future Chicago, and finally died upon the borders of a little stream in Michigan, which gratefully perpetuates his name in its own. Brave Marquette! He escaped the perils of Chicago to yield up his spirit amid the innocencies of Michigan. In 1682 La Salle, the French fur-trader, ventured down the Mississippi to the Gulf, without stopping to take the bluff outposts that sentinelled the future Vicksburg, and without halting over night at Natchez, and encountering the loss of all his earnings in that hazardous, porous, and absorbing place. Two years later he formed one of a colony sent out from Rochelle, in France, by the minister Colbert, and was wrecked in the Bay of Metagorda, the first of that large series of castaways in that peculiarly enterprising empire called Texas. France thus added the lone star to her American constellation.