habits as the bear with which he had coped in a hand to paw and knife to fangs conflict. Thus were the offshoots of the two greatest and most cultivated and refined of modern nations, vis-a-vis, in the heart of the American continent. Soon the song of the voyageur, "Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian vineyards," as he floated with the stream, or propelled his batteaux against the current, with pole, and line, and oar, and sail, was hushed forever. Soon the panting of the steamer awoke the long silent echos of the bluffs and startled the aquatic fowl from lagoon and bayou. Soon the swelling tide of a more advanced civilization rolled westward over the prairies, and the "common" of the rustic village, upon whose verdant sward and beneath whose branching elms, enamoured swains and blushing maidens, "Wearing their Norman caps, and their kirtles of blue, and the ear rings Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heir loom, Handed down from mother to child, through long generations," had been wont to "trip the light fantastic toe" to rude and simple music, was illumined with the camp fires and whitened with the wagon covers of the Saxon emigrant. Soon the alloted arpents which, in the exercise of "squatter sovereignty," had been appropriated by each family as a home lot, were surveyed, divided, staked and sold, and an embryo city was rising thereon. Soon the quaint and moss covered church, where Vesper, Matin and Mass had erst been said, chanted and sung, gave place to the "meeting house" of another creed and faith.