ascended the Mississippi, having the greatest difficulty in stemming its currents.

At the thirty-eighth degree of latitude they entered the river Illinois, which was broad and deep and peaceful in its flow. Its banks were without a paragon for its prairies and its forests, its buffaloes and deer, its turkeys and geese, and many kinds of game, and even beavers ; and there were many small lakes and rivulets.

"When I was told of a country without trees," wrote Joliet, "I imagined a country that had been burned over, or of a soil too poor to produce anything; but we have remarked just the contrary, and it would be impossible to find a better soil for grain, for vines, or any fruits whatever." He held the country on the Illinois River to be the most beautiful and the most easy to colonize. "There is no need," he said, "that an emigrant should employ ten years in cutting down the forest and burning it. On the day of his arrival the emigrant could put the plow into the earth."

"The

The tribe of the Illinois entreated Marquette to come and reside among them. One of their chiefs, with their young men, guided the party to the portage, which, in spring and the early part of summer, was but half a league long, and they easily reached the lake. place at which we entered the lake," to use the words of Joliet, "is a harbor very convenient to receive ships, and to give them protection against the wind." Before the end of September the explorers were safe in Green Bay; but Marquette was exhausted by his labors.

In 1675 Marquette, who had been delayed by his failing health for more than a year, rejoined the Illinois on their river. Assembling the tribe, whose chiefs and men

were reckoned at two thousand, he raised before them pictures of the Virgin Mary, spoke to them of one who had died on the cross for all men, and built an altar and said mass in their presence on the prairie. Again celebrating the mystery of the eucharist, on Easter Sunday, he took possession of the land in the name of Jesus Christ, and there founded a mission.

This work being accomplished, his health failed him, and he began a journey by way of Chicago to Mackinaw. On the way, feeling himself arrested by the approach of death, he entered a little river in Michigan, and was set on shore that he might breathe his last in peace. He repeated in solitude all his acts of devotion of the preceding days. When after a little while his companions returned to him, they found him passing gently away. On the highest bank of the stream the canoemen dug his grave. To a city, a county, and a river, Michigan has given his name. – Adapted.

DEFINITIONS.

Căl u mět', peace pipe of the Indians. Chăs tişed', punished. Ar'bi ter, one who determines a controversy. Māize, Indian Păr'a gon, equal. Eu'eha rist, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

corn.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main -

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blue from wreathed horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

THE DISCOVERY OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN.

BY FRANCIS PARKMAN.

It was past the middle of May, 1609, and the expected warriors from the upper country had not come; a delay which seems to have given Champlain little concern, for, without waiting longer, he set forth with no better allies than a band of Montagnais. But, as he moved up the St. Lawrence, he saw, thickly clustered in the bordering forest, the lodges of an Indian camp, and, landing, found his Huron and Algonquin allies.

Few of them had ever seen a white man. They surrounded the steel-clad strangers in speechless wonderment. Champlain asked for their chief, and the staring throng moved with him toward a lodge where sat, not one chief, but two, for each band had its own. There were feasting, smoking, speeches; and, the needful ceremony over, all descended together to Quebec, for the strangers were bent on seeing those wonders of architecture whose fame had pierced the recesses of their forests.

On their arrival, they feasted their eyes and glutted their appetites; yelped consternation at the sharp explosion of the arquebus and the roar of the cannon; pitched their camps, and bedecked themselves for their war dance. In the still night, their fire glared against the black and jagged cliff, and the fierce red light fell on tawny limbs. convulsed with frenzied gestures and ferocious stampings; on contorted visages, hideous with paint; on brandished weapons, stone war clubs, stone hatchets, and stonepointed lances; while the drum kept up its hollow boom, and the air was split with mingled yells, till the horned

owl on Point Levi, startled at the sound, gave back a whoop no less discordant.

Stand with Champlain and view the war dance; sit with him at the war feast, a close-packed company, ring within ring of ravenous feasters; then embark with him on his harebrained venture of discovery. It was in a small shallop, carrying, besides himself, eleven Frenchmen. They were armed with the arquebus, à matchlock or firelock somewhat like the modern carbine, and from its shortness not ill suited for use in the forest.

On the twenty-eighth of May, they spread their sails and held their course against the current, while around them the river was alive with canoes, and hundreds of naked arms plied the paddle with a steady, measured sweep. They crossed the Lake of St. Peter, threaded the devious channels among its many islands, and reached at last the mouth of the Rivière des Iroquois, since called the Richelieu, or the St. John.

On left and right stretched walls of verdure, fresh with the life of June. Now, aloft in the lonely air rose the cliffs of Beloeil, and now, before them, framed in circling forests, the basin of Chambly spread its tranquil mirror, glittering in the sun. Shallop outsailed the canoes. Champlain, leaving his allies behind, crossed the basin and essayed to pursue his course; but as he listened in the stillness, the unwelcome noise of rapids reached his ear, and, by glimpses through the dark foliage of the Islets of St. John, he could see the gleam of snowy foam and the flash of hurrying waters.

Leaving the boat by the shore in charge of four men, he set forth with Marais, La Routte, and five others, to explore the wild before him. They pushed their tedious.