restless life of these valleys, especially of the Mississippi Valley,
against the background of Gallic adventure and pious endeavor which is
seen in richest color, highest charm, and truest value at a distance.

But, while I must ask my readers in America to expatriate themselves in
their imaginations and to look over into this valley as aliens, I wish
them to know that I write, though myself in temporary exile, as a son of
the Mississippi Valley, as a geographical descendant of France; that my
commission is given me of my love for the boundless stretch of prairie and
plain whose virgin sod I have broken with my plough; of the lure of the
waterways and roads where I have followed the boats and the trails of
French voyageurs and coureurs de bois; and of the possessing interest of
the epic story of the development of that most virile democracy known to
the world. The "Divine River," discovered by the French, ran near the
place of my birth. My county was that of "La Salle," a division of the
land of the Illinois, "the land of men." The Fort, or the Rock, St. Louis,
built by La Salle and Tonty, was only a few miles distant. A little
farther, a town, Marquette, stands near the place where the French priest
and explorer, Pere Marquette, ministered to the Indians. Up-stream, a busy
city keeps the name of Joliet on the lips of thousands, though the brave
explorer would doubtless not recognize it as his own; and below, the new-
made Hennepin Canal makes a shorter course to the Mississippi River than
that which leads by the ruins of La Salle's Fort Crevecoeur. It is of such
environment that these chapters were suggested, and it has been by my love
for it, rather than by any profound scholarship, that they have been
dictated. I write not as a scholar--since most of my life has been spent
in action, not in study--but as an academic coureur de bois and of what I
have known and seen in the Valley of Democracy, the fairest and most
fruitful of the regions where France was pioneer in America.