above their own lodges or hunting-grounds, and must even have had at times some tangible message of their brothers of the upper waters, some fragments of their handiwork, such as a broken canoe, an arrow-shaft. But the men of the sources, up toward the "swamps of the nests of the eagles," on the low watersheds, heard only vague reports of the sea or gulf; even the Indians of Arkansas, as we read in the account of the De Soto expedition, could or would "give no account of the sea, and had no word in their language, or idea or emblem, that could make them comprehend a great expanse of salt water like the ocean." So the river was not the source or father of running waters, but the great, awe-inspiring water. The French were misled, as we have seen, when they first heard Indian references to it, thinking it was what they were longing for--the western ocean, a great stretch of salt water instead of another and a larger Seine. And when they did discover that it was a river, their first concern was not as to what lay along its course, but as to where it led. A prominent American historian, to whom we are much indebted, with Parkman, for the memorials of this period, praises by contrast those who kept within smell of tide-water along the Atlantic shore. But when we reach the underlying motives of the exploration and settlement of that continent, do they who sought the sources and the paths to the smell of other tide-waters deserve dispraise or less praise than those who sat thriftily by the Atlantic seashore? The English colonists were struggling for themselves and theirs, not for the good or glory of a country across seas. They had no reason to look beyond their short rivers, so long as their valleys were fruitful and ample. Shall they be praised the more that they did not for a century venture beyond the sources of those streams? The first French followers of the river courses were, as we have seen, devotees of a religion for the salvation of others, bearers of advancing banners for the glory of France, and lovers of nature and adventure. And if there were, as there were, avaricious men among them, we must be careful not to blame them more than those whose avarice or excessive thrift was economically more beneficial to the world and to the community and the colony and to themselves. Economic values and moral virtues, as expressed in productivity of fields, mines, factories, church attendance, and obedience to the selectmen, are so easy of assessment that it is difficult to get just appraisement for those who endured everything, not for their own freedom or gain but for others' glory, and accomplished so little that could be measured in the terms of substantial, visible, tangible, economic, or ecclesiastical progress.