France and England in North America; a Series of Historical Narratives — Part 3 by Francis Parkman
page 69 of 364 (18%)
page 69 of 364 (18%)
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exhalations of the unwholesome shore, or in the narrow confines of their
birchen vessels, anchored on the river. Marquette was attacked with dysentery. Languid and well-nigh spent, he invoked his celestial mistress. as day after day, and week after week, they won their slow way northward. At length they reached the Illinois, and, entering its mouth, followed its course, charmed, as they went, with its placid waters, its shady forests, and its rich plains, grazed by the bison and the deer. They stopped at a spot soon to be made famous in the annals of western discovery. This was a village of the Illinois, then called Kaskaskia,--a name afterwards transferred to another locality. [Footnote: Marquette says that it consisted at this time of seventy-four lodges. These, like the Huron and Iroquois lodges, contained each several fires and several families. This village was about seven miles below the site of the present town of Ottawa.] A chief, with a band of young warriors, offered to guide them to the Lake of the Illinois; that is to say, Lake Michigan. Thither they repaired; and, coasting its shores, reached Green Bay at the end of September, after an absence of about four months, during which they had paddled their canoes somewhat more than two thousand five hundred miles. [Footnote: The journal of Marquette, first published in an imperfect form by Thevenot, in 1681, has been reprinted by Mr. Lenox, under the direction of Mr. Shea, from the manuscript preserved in the archives of the Canadian Jesuits. It will also be found in Shea's _Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley_, and the _Relations Inedites_, of Martin. The true map of Marquette accompanies all these publications. The map published by Thevenot and reproduced by Bancroft is not Marquette's. The original of this, of which I have a fac-simile, bears the title _Carte de la Nouvelle Decouverte que les Peres Jesuites out fait en l'annee 1672, et continuee par le Pere Jacques Marquette, etc_. The return route of the expedition is incorrectly laid down on it. A manuscript map of the Jesuit |
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