Without going back, in philosophical style, to the creation of the world, we may say that the State had a good beginning. Father Marquette and his pious comrade Allouez, both soldiers of the Cross, explored her northern wilds for God, and not for greed. They saw her solid and serene beauty, and presaged her greatness, and they did all that wise and devoted Catholic missionaries could do toward sanctifying her soil to good ends forever. They found 'a peaceful and manly tribe' in her interior, the name Illinois signifying 'men of men,' and the superiority of the tribe to all the other Indians of the region justifying the appellation. Allouez said, 'Their country is the best field for the gospel,' and he planted it as well as he could with what he believed to be the Tree of Life, long nourished with the prayers and tears of himself and his successors. The Indians took kindly to the teaching of the good and wise Frenchman, and it is said that even after troubles had begun to arise, owing, as usual, to the misconduct of rapacious and unprincipled white settlers, many of the Indians held fast by their newly adopted faith, and even showed some good fruits of it in forbearance and honesty of dealing. All this was not far from contemporary with the period when Cotton Mather, in New England, while teaching the principles of civil government, was persecuting Quakers and burning witches; and in yet another part of the new country, William Penn, neither Catholic nor Puritan, was making fair and honest treaties with savages, and winning them, by the negative virtue of truthfulness, to believe that white men could be friends. The Great Colbert, minister to Louis XIV, under whose auspices the French missionaries had been sent out, very soon came to the conclusion that it was important to enlarge and strengthen French influence in this great new country, particularly after he had ascertained the existence of the 'Great River,' which Father Marquette had undertaken to explore, and by means of which he expected to open trade with China! But the minister of finance required rather more worldly agents than the single-hearted and devoted ministers of religion, and he found a fitting instrument in the young and ardent Robert de la Salle, a Frenchman of enterprise and sagacity, worldly enough in his motives, but of indomitable energy and perseverance. He was very successful in establishing commerce in furs and other productions of the country, but lost his life somewhere near the mouth of the Mississippi, which he first explored, after escaping a thousand dangers. His name is famous in the land, and a large town was called after it; but what would he say if he heard his patronymic transformed into 'Lay-sell,' as it is, universally, among the 'natives'?