The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-02

OlIucultteS tO make II less unknOWn, CO make 1t more productive and easier to re- claim for you, their distant interiors. No one I am sure will think 1t amiss that I, a compatriot of theirs, and a representa- tive of their country, recall at this day their efforts and express today's gratitude for yesterdays work. For they were hardy men, those children of distant France; they were plucky, enterprisine and courageous; they lived strenuous lives indeed; all qualities for which you ever had 2 special regard. To say that they did not fear danger is to islander them; they
 Soldiers. missionaries, governors of cit les. explorers came year after year, from chances or the beauty of the unknown. the opportunity of increasing their coun- trys dominions, or of becoming famous, or of instructing souls, and of dying, if death was to be met. bravely and honor ably. Very French they were, with all the qualities of their race, and some. thing else perhaps. some of them, than the qualities. As they went down the great rivers from the regions of the Canadian lakes to the Mexican sea they gave them French names, and the reading of a\ map of that epoch strongly reminds one of tlNe century of the Sum- King; there he is with all his court, figured in lands, cities, lakes and rivers. Louisiana bears his own name. Lake Pontchartrain the name of his Minister of Marine; Fort Duquesne, the name of his famous sailor. There were diSO tuC INlNcIS SOlDcTt anu OcISlclcy, pCt- ter known nowadays as Mississippi and Illinois. One of the great lakes had been named after the Duke of Orleans, another of the great Condo, the winner of Roc Cont. but this last inland sea. as indeed most of the others, soon resumed it's In- dian name, the homely name of Lake Erie. the lake of the Cat.
 Very French they were those men, this Father Marquette, who with Joliet. first beheld the magnificent river that washes your walls, the vast existence of which was then unknown, and who explored 1t Robert Cavalier Sieur de La Sale. who had, long before our days, our days mo- ton of the importance of the great conn mercial routes; whose purpose was to at the very spot where your northern lines of railways have opened theirs; who called his first house on the American soil La Chine in order that he might never quest. but not before he had explored the Mississippi down to its mouth; not before he had ascertained that it's source was to the West, and that the river, therefore the Pacific; not before he had made the first French settlements in this your country and given it name which has not been replaced by another, and is it's present name of Louisiana.
 Other Blazers of the Way,
 LOIS lb ,tue roll ana great were the hsrdships. To the same region with the same object of discovering and improv- ing came that typical cadet de Gascogne, the chevalier Antoine de la Mothe Cadil- lac, who on the Fist of July. 1701. unfurl- ed the. French flag at a certain spot now the town of Detroit; he became af- terwards Governor of Louisiana. Then such men came as du Tissenet, as the brothers Le Moine d'Herville and Le AFAtv 1x ,t1 loo nAar of New Orleans; as father de Charle- voix who gave the best account we have of the country and spoke most wisely about its future, as La Clede, worthier than any one to be remembered at this day and this place, as he was the found CT of your town. ., ..-- ...
 .Lcng Is the roll and great were the hardships. The exploration of the coasts had been comparatively easy and thou sands had attempted it. Settlers from inland: they travelled across 8 huge con tinent more unknown then to the civil ized world than was in our times the .Af rica of Livingstone and Stanley. They did 1t in Q cheerful optimistic spirit, that nothing daunted but death. Living as they did in truly Rowling wildernesses'' there remained yet with them something or the mother-country; and that appeared not only in their speech and manners, but in their very attitudes. Charlevoix meets figures of dead men fabricated by Indians; he was glad to find that they were represented with falling arms, from which he concluded that the authors of these trophies had massaored some of their own kin. When Indians killed French people the figure represented men with their fist on the hip; Versailles fash ion. How could it be otherwise when they lived. some of them, on a settlement owned by a gentleman called dArtagnan, d and managed, as was appropriate, by two musketcers. One almost expects the names of those two to have been Por- thos and Aramis. but they were M. DAT tiguidres and l.. DeBenac.
 And these men recalled their country in more important things than names and attitudes. Cadillac had scarcely given name to the spot where he meant to ere ate town than he sent for his wife and younger son; 1t was to be town indeed, with wives and children, and family life; and it was sc and it has ever been so, since Cadillac willed it. When La Sale was killed In his second journey on the Mississippi in 1887, he had with him his CTS soon discovered that the region was not the metallic Eldorado, they had heard of it In Europe, but that 1t was a match less agricultural country and they began cutting the trees and tilling the ground with none of the modern implements and helps; no harvesting machines from Chicago" as the desert spot was called in their days, no horses, no horned cat tle. 1ney leu lIlueeu, not III ICLlOn put III truth, and long before the famous Mar iner of York" was wrecked by the Ori- noko river. the life of Robinson Crusoe. Unknown to Europe, far from any neigh bors, by the shade of the painless forest. they tried their best; they died. many of them obscurely leaving no name to be engraved on the broSze tables of history, but leaving better than mere name, families, many of which still subsist; bet ter than families: examples of earnest ness and endurance. creating tradition which will never die out. ''Rien ne Sc perd.''
 "Fiye Water" and the Indian.
 The greatness of their difficulties, the scantiness of their means, the wisdom of many of their wives are equally striking. More than one did their utmost to teach and improve their Indian neighbor; they forbade, at an early date, the selling to Cadillac did so from the first; the Mar quis de Vaudreuil ressued the same or ders later. They soon discovered that the northern regions alone could produce wheat enough to feed the whole country though 1t should be quite peopled down to the sea" The question of labor was ono of prominent difficulty and import ance. Should it be the hired labor of freemen. or the compulsory labor of the imported negro? On this. one of those early French explorers Charlevoix sum- med up his opinion in the following mem orable sentence: Hired servants should be preferred. When the time of their service is expired they bcome inhabi tants and increase the number of the slaves are always strangers And who can be assured that by continually in creasing in our colonies they will not one day become formidable enemies? Can we