all for the France that is.

But it was my hope that what was spoken in Paris might some day be read in
America, and particularly in that valley which the French evoked from the
unknown, that those who now live there might know before what a valorous
background they are passing, though I can tell them less of it than they
will learn from the Homeric Parkman, if they will but read his immortal
story.

My first debt is to him; but I must include with him many who made their
contributions to these pages as I wrote them in Paris. The quotation-
marks, diligent and faithful as they have tried to be, have, I fear, not
reached all who have assisted, but my gratitude extends to every source of
fact and to every guide of opinion along the way, from the St. Lawrence to
the Gulf of Mexico, even if I have not in every instance known or
remembered his name.

As without Parkman's long labors I could not have prepared these chapters,
so without the occasion furnished by the Hyde Foundation and the
nomination made by the President of Harvard University to the exchange
lectureship, I should not have undertaken this delightful filial task. The
readers' enjoyment and profit of the result will not be the full measure
of my gratitude to Mr. James H. Hyde, the author of the Foundation, to
President Lowell, and to him whose confidence in me persuaded me to it.
But I hope these enjoyments and profits will add something to what I
cannot adequately express.

That what was written could, in the midst of official duties, be prepared
for the press is due largely to the patient, verifying, proof-reading
labors of Mr. Frank L. Tolman, my young associate in the State Library.