The Indians, with herds of deer, antelope and buffalo, give life and motion to them. It is then they should be visited; and I pity the man whose soul could remain unmoved under such a scene of excitement." [Footnote: Report intended to illustrate a map of the hydrographical basin of the upper Mississippi River, Washington, 1843, 26th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Doc. 237, p. 52.] It is a singular fortune that has made a son of France, a century and a half after the discovery of this mighty stream, the explorer and cartographer of its sources, a fortune that has its partial explanation at least in the lure of this stream for the Gallic heart. Mrs. Trollope, a famous English traveller, found its lower valley depressing, as has many another: "Unwonted to European eyes and mystically heavy is the eternal gloom that seems to have settled upon that region. Whatever wind may blow, however bright and burning the southern sun may blaze in the unclouded sky, the stream is forever turbid and forever dark." Of the scene at its mouth, where La Salle and his men had sung with such joy, she says: "Had Dante seen it, he might have drawn images of another Bolgia from its horrors." [Footnote: "Domestic Manners of the Americans," p. r] But no French visitor, so far as I know, has ever found it gloomy, even in flood or tempest on its subtropical stretches; nor has he found those level vastnesses desolate. A traveller, Paul Fountain by name, and so of French origin, I suspect, wandering over those valley plains in the early days, tells of the sense of freedom, health, and strength that they give: "There is no air like the prairie air--not even the grand freshness of the boundless ocean itself.--The loveliness and variety of the prairie odors are quite indescribable, as are its superb wild flowers. It is a paradise. No man who has lived on it long enough to know it and love it (no great time, I can assure you) ever experiences real happiness after he has left it. There is a longing and eager craving to return to the life. The vulgar cowboys and hunters, uneducated and unpoetical past all degree, never leave it except to get drunk. Their money gone, back they go to get fresh strength and more pelf for another orgie; but if by chance they abandon the wild, free life, they soon drink themselves to lunacy or death, and their last babblings are of the glorious wilderness they all love." [Footnote: "The Great Deserts and Forests of North America," p. 22.] This is the too exuberant expression of one who had probably never had a hearth of his own in France, but it gives some intimation of the charm of that great and seemingly infinite sweep of level ground, which many, and especially unimaginative minds, find so monotonous.