was killed by a bear; he had seen Father Réne Ménard go forth on his sacred work, to die in the wilderness; but the ardent love of religious enterprise, which made his appointment to this wild and distant land so welcome amid the comforts of home, was not chilled or daunted: one of the first missionaries who reached the Mississippi, his name is associated with that of Marquette in the annals of Western discovery, whom he succeeded in the Illinois mission; in his light canoe he faithfully explored the shores of Michigan, and erected a chapel at Chippewa. The record of strange animals, impressive scenery, savage hospitality and games, alternates curiously, in these narratives, with the observance of saints' days and the rites of Christianity, and the American wilderness with the associations of the Roman Church.

In the Old World, it is a pastime of singular fascination to the cultivated and imaginative American, to haunt an ancient town like Chester, where Roman walls and camp outlines, faded banners won in Cromwell's time, and baronial escutcheons or classic coins identify the site of historic events associated with the distant past. To the native of a land where all is so fresh, active, and changeful, the shadow of the pyramids, the moonlit arches of the Colosseum, and the medieval towers of Florence impart to the landscape a hallowed charm, more impressive from its entire novelty. And yet such experiences are possible at home, if the same retrospective dreamer will but connect the facts of the past, of which there are so few artificial memorials, with the aspect of nature unmodified in her more grand features by the vicissitudes of centuries. Looking forth, in the calm of a summer morning, upon a lonely and wooded reach of Western river or lake, let him recall the story of pioneer, adventurer, or missionary, contrasting it with the tokens of subsequent civilization, and the appeal to wonder is not less emphatic, though more vague. How wild, remote, exuberant must have seemed the Father of Waters to Marquette and Joliet, when they glided out upon its vast and unexplored bosom! On the 13th of May, 1673, with five other Frenchmen, they embarked in two

canoes, provided with a slender stock of Indian corn and smoked beef; and, guided by such information as they could gather from the aborigines, left Green Bay, ascended the Fox river, and, on the 25th of June, entered the Mississippi. The first naïve and quaint record of what they saw, heard, and did on this primitive expedition, has, by the liberal enterprise of one of our citizens,* been reproduced as it then greeted the eyes of their sympathetic countrymen, with the obsolete type so appropriate to such a voyageur's chronicle. Father Marquette tells us there of the wild rice, grapes, and plums wherewith they regaled-of the Miamis that assisted their portage of the trace of footsteps on the river's bank, following which they came upon a beautiful prairie-of sojourns in Illinois villages, calumet-smoking with friendly natives, feverish nights with mosquitos-of the dreary bellow of herds of buffaloes, and the lowly flights of the startled quails. Those months of primitive navigation were fraught with a rare excitement to minds reared amid the highest existent civilization; but, as if awed by the precarious life and majestic aspect of primeval nature, the simplicity of the narrative is only equalled by the unprecedented interest of the discoveries; and the good priest's memory has long been hallowed by his death in the midst of scenes forever identified with his brave and pious character. On the shore, of Lake Michigan, the isolated and picturesque witness of those heroic toils and that humane ministry, on the 18th of May, 1675, the canoe of Father Marquette entered a small stream, and he requested the two men in charge thereof to leave him for half an hour: on returning, they found him dead. The site of his grave, † near the bank, is still designated, and the little river bears his name; but the brief and artless record * James Lenox, Esq., of New York.

+ "Marquette's body was disinterred from its lonely resting place on the lake shore by the Kiskakon Indians, among whom he had faithfully labored. Dissecting it, according to custom, they washed the bones and dried them in the sun, then putting them neatly in a box of birch bark, they set out to bear them to the house of St. Ignatius, at Michilimakinac."-DABLON'S Narrative of Marquette's Expedition.

of his voyage, a small duodecimo of forty-three pages, is the most characteristic memorial of the man, and one of the most endeared as well as vivid glimpses of that marvellous river and region, as they were first revealed to civilized nations.*

Another French missionary to Canada has left, not only a more ample, but more authentic chronicle, and his name is often invoked with trust and respect by our historical writers. Pierre François Xavier Charlevoix was born in 1682, at St. Quentin, and died in 1761, at Laffèche. His life was devoted to study and travel in behalf of his faith; and few of his order have manifested greater courage, patience, and integrity. His American tour, although now but a pleasant excursion, was formidable and adventurous enough, in his own day, to render him more famous than an African or Arctic traveller of our own. His account of the productions of the wilderness, the extent and character of rivers, woods, and mountains, and especially of the character and customs of the natives, was not only esteemed when the novelty of its details originally won readers, but has continued among the standard books of travel. Charlevoix carefully and thoroughly, with the means and opportunities at command,

* See J. G. Shea's "Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, with the Narrative of Marquette, Hennepin, Douay," &c., 8vo., fac-simile and map, New York, 1852; Rev. W. I. Kip's "Early Jesuit Missions in North America, compiled from the letters of the French Jesuits," 1 vol., New York, 1846, and 2 vols. 8vo., London, 1847; and "Relations des Jesuits, contenant ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable dans les missions des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus dans la Nouvelle France: ouvrage publié sous les auspices du gouvernement Canadien,” 3 vols. royal 8vo., of about 900 pp. each, Quebec, 1858. This work, of which only a small number were printed, is a complete reprint of all the Jesuit relations concerning the missions in Canada and French North America, from 1611 to 1672, and contains most important matter concerning the Indian tribes, and the early history of Maine, New York, and all the Northwest."

"Histoire et Description générale de la Nouvelle France," atlas and 6 vols., Paris, 1744.

"Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguires, giving an account of a voyage to Canada, and travels through that vast country and Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico," 8vo., London, 1763.

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ascended the St. Lawrence, traversed the region called the country of the Illinois," and descended the Mississippi. A county now bears his name in Michigan. He visited the East and West Indies, and, when at home again, elaborately recorded his extensive travels. They form a valuable work of reference when it is desirable to ascertain the physical and local facts in regard to these countries during the first part of the last century. Among the suggestive historical and personal associations which the rapid march of events, and especially the triumphs of locomotion and intercourse, continually excite in this age and country, few are more impressive than the fact that the two most remote points of Charlevoix's world-wide journeys were, in a manner, brought together when the Japanese embassy visited the United States a few years since. In his wildest dreams the ardent Jesuit could scarcely have imagined that the region of mighty rivers and primeval woods, which he so laboriously explored amid privation, toil, and danger, could, in so brief a period, become accessible, populous, and fused, as it were, into the compass of a recreative tour; and that the natives of that far-away isle in the Indian seas, whose semi-civilization he first reported to Europe, should come hither as ambassadors to a vast republic, and carry their Asian aspect through crowded cities of Anglo-Saxon freemen. Never, perhaps, were stationary and progressive civilization brought so directly in contrast. The Japanese envoys, as well as their distant home, are identical with those Charlevoix so long ago described; while the virgin solitudes of nature, amid which his lonely canoe floated or his solitary camp fire blazed, are superseded by busy towns and peopled with flying caravans of travellers, representing an economy, character, and government full of vitality and of prosperous and original elements.

It is curious to turn to the somewhat monotonous but still instructive pages of Charlevoix, and realize how exclusively, at the time he wrote, the interest of this continent was aboriginal and prospective; for it is with the aspects and resources of nature and the peculiarities of the Indian tribes that his

pen is occupied. Whatever of romance tinges his chronicle is Arcadian; the myths and manners of the different tribes, the trees and the reptiles, waterfalls and savannas, are the staple themes. His religious views and mission lend a pensive dignity to his narrative: like most of his countrymen, he develops certain sympathies with, and finds curious interest in, the sauvages; he pictures the wild beauty and primitive life of the country when furs were the chief article of trafficwhen the convents of Canada, the frontier forts, and the Indian villages were the only places of secure sojourn—when "fire water" had only begun its fascinating destruction among the then naïve children of the soil-when rude fields of tobacco, orchards, and maize fields alone gave sign of cultivation, and game and fish supplied the wanderer's subsistence. In Charlevoix we find the germs of colonial romance in America; the primitive maps, the old forts, the early crude botanical nomenclature, with ethnological hints regarding the Hurons, Iroquois, Algonquin, and other tribes. He first elaborately pictured the "lacs "-those wonderful inland seas which constituted so remarkable a feature of the New World to its first visitors, and became the great means of economical development by initiating, under wise statesmanship, the prolific system of communication between the far interior and the broad seacoast.

His letters were commenced in 1720, by order of the King of France. One of the best English translations appeared in 1765. The details are curious now, rather than novel; they are carefully noted, and form the best authority for reference as to the primitive aspect, productions, and aboriginal tribes. The topographical statements are often confirmed by experience at the present day; and the imaginative traveller finds his enjoyment of the scenery enhanced by contemplating it with the record of this venerable guide before him, and contrasting with that early record the scene as modified by the sights and sounds of Anglo-Saxon civilization.

"In New England, and other provinces of America," says Charlevoix, "subject to the British empire, there prevails an