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Page 29
"I never think: I scorn the imputation," repled Vincent, with a look of
assumed disdain. "It was a inspiration."
"And you have inspired us to a glorious undertaking. The Crusades were
nothing to it. Say, Montague," to me, "you are agreed?"
"Yes, I am agreed," I assented. "We will spend our summer on the Great
Lakes. It will be novel, it will be refreshing, it will be classical."
So it was concluded. A week from that time found us at Oswego. Our
proposed route was an elaborate one. It was to start at Oswego, take a
beeline across Lake Ontario to Toronto, hence up the lake and through
the Welland Canal into Lake Erie, along the shores of that historical
inland sea, touching at Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky, and Toledo, up
Detroit River, through the Lake and River of St. Clair, then gliding
over the waters of Lake Huron, dash down along the shores of Lake
Michigan to Chicago, and back past Milwaukee, through the Straits of
Mackinaw and the ship-canal into the placid waves of Superior, making
Duluth the terminus of our journey. Our return would be leisurely,
stopping here and there, at out-of-the-way places, camping-out whenever
the fancy seized us and the opportunity offered, to hunt, to fish, to
rest, being for the time knight-errants of pleasure, or, as the
Historian dubbed us, peripatetic philosophers, in search, not of the
touchstone to make gold, but the touchstone to make health. Our trip was
to occupy two months.
It was well toward the latter part of June in 1881, on one of the
brightest of summer mornings, that our steamer, belonging to the regular
daily line to Toronto, steamed slowly out from the harbor of Oswego. So
we were at last on the "beautiful water," for that is the meaning of
Ontario in the Indian tongue. Here, two hundred years before us, the
war-canoes of De Champlain and his Huron allies had spurned the foaming
tide. Here, a hundred years later the batteaux of that great soldier,
Montcalm, had swept round the bluff to win the fortress on its height,
then in English hands. Historic memories haunted it. The very waves
sparkling in the morning sunshine whispered of romantic tales.
Seated at the stern of the boat we looked back upon the fading city.
Hugh Warren was smoking, and his slow-moving blue eyes were fixed
dreamily upon the shore. He did not seem to be gazing at anything, and
yet we knew he saw more than any of us.
"A centime for your thoughts, Hugh!" cried Vincent, rising and
stretching his limbs.
"I was thinking," said the Historian, "of that Frenchman, Montcalm, who
one summer day came down on the English at Oswego unawares with his
gunboats and Indians and gendarmes. Of the twenty-five thousand people
in yonder city I don't suppose there are a dozen who know what his plans
were. They were grand ones. In no country on the face of the globe has
nature traced outlines of internal navigation on so grand a scale as
upon our American continent. Entering the mouth of the St. Lawrence we
are carried by that river through the Great Lakes to the head of Lake
Superior, a distance of more than two thousand miles. On the south we
find the Mississippi pouring its waters into the Gulf of Mexico, within
a few degrees of the tropics after a course of three thousand miles.
'The Great Water,' as its name signifies, and its numerous branches
drain the surface of about one million one hundred thousand square
miles, or an area twenty times greater than England and Wales. The
tributaries of the Mississippi equal the largest rivers of Europe. The
course of the Missouri is probably not less than twenty-five hundred
miles. The Ohio winds above a thousand miles through fertile countries.
The tributaries of _these_ tributaries are great rivers. The Wabash, a
feeder of the Ohio, has a course of above five hundred miles, four
hundred of which are navigable. If the contemplated canal is ever
completed which will unite Lake Michigan with the head of navigation on
the Illinois River, it will be possible to proceed by lines of inland
navigation from Quebec to New Orleans. There is space within the regions
enjoying these advantages of water communication, and already peopled by
the Anglo-Saxon race, for four hundred millions of the human race, or
more than double the population of Europe at the present time.
Imagination cannot conceive the new influences which will be exercised
on the affairs of the world when the great valley of the Mississippi,
and the continent from Lake Superior to New Orleans, is thronged with
population. In the valley of the Mississippi alone there is abundant
room for a population of a hundred million.
"In Montcalm's day all this territory belonged to France. It was that
soldier's dream, and he was no less a statesman than a soldier, to make
here a great nation. Toward that end a great chain of forts was to be
built along the line from Ontario to New Orleans. Sandusky, Mackinaw,
Detroit, Oswego, Du Quesne, were but a few links in the contemplated
chain that was to bind the continent forever to French interests. It was
for this he battled through all those bloody, brilliant campaigns of the
old French war. But the English were too strong for him. Montcalm
perished, and the power of France was at an end in the New World. But it
almost overwhelms me at the thought of what a mighty empire was lost
when the English huzza rose above the French clarion on the Plains of
Abraham."
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