The St. Mary banner. (Franklin, Parish of St. Mary, La.) 1889-1931, 1914-12-05

symbolical of, and welded to-
the three groups of peoples
through whom the three great
phases of its life as a river
run. Its part in war also has CORE
sponded to all three, and since it first
entered recorded history, 1000 years
ago. till today, when 1t is so apparent
ly the obstacle surmounted by the
German invasion of France, it has
checked or aided 80 generations OF
soldiers. All it's first course goes
through that essentially Gallo coun-
try OF Lorraine, Of the Three Bishop
rics and Of the countrysides that
bound the Barrois. On its very up
per waters, where 1t is no more than
q clear meadow stream, you will find
Domremy and the house where Joan
OF Arc was born.
In the midst Of that same stretch
where already the Mouse is river
stands the great Gallo fortress of
Verdun, the town upon whose fortunes
80 many invasions have depended.
Further upon its course see the
somber name Of Sedan; and in all this
long French rising and flowing of the
river there is upon either side that
mass of rich meadowland and vine
yard, low, rounded hill and strictly
ordered woods, which make up q
French landscape. 1t Is this stretch,
too, that runs-all the earlier and
higher part Of it-along and behind
these "Cotes de Mouse" which are
the stretched line Of defense between
Toul and Verdun; which make a wall
OF forts from Commercy at the gates
Of Toul to the Verdun ring.
Merges Into Dutch.
Similarly, all the lower reaches.
from the Roman crossing at Maastricht
to the vague marshes, fiat mud is
lands, dykes and confused shadows
whereby 1t mingles with the Scheldt
and with the Rhine and passes to
the sea. are quite Dutch, not only in
the language spoken upon either side
Of the river, but in the broadening
flats and sluggish waters and in the
very sky. For the skies OF the Neither
land plain are different from anything
else In the rest of Europe. They
seem to be lit from beneath and their
clouds supply the accident and con-
trast which the earthly horizon lacks.
All this lower stream Is full of such
wars as the seventeenth century
fought to Withstand Louis XIV. The
duke of Marlborough owed his title
to the clearing of the Lower Mouse
rolling up the French garrisons as far
as Liege in 1902. ;
Between these two peopled, wealthy |
sections, the upper and the lower, the
broad seaward reaches and the in
land meadow streams, the Mouse by !
q curious accident experiences a fate |
not promised by it's origin and hardly |
at its end. 1t runs
through gorges more bold, and In |
parts more deserted, than those of |
any western river. The trench which |
It thus occupies IL the more memoir
able to those who have followed It,
from the breadth, the depth and the
silence of the stream that flows
through It between the very steep
walls Of wood and rock upon either
side. These are 500, 600, 700 feet
above the stream, and in places 1000
feet, but they give an impression Of
Tar greater height from the uniformity
Of their coloring and wooded cloak,
from their sharpness of fall, and from
the way in which they run parallel.
each the effects of the
other upon either side of the dead.
fat floor of water between. This &C
cident which the Mouse suffers, this
landscape coming after
the easy pastures Of Lorraine, coming
before the great sea-dats OF the Meth
makes the course Of the
Mouse comparable to the life Of some
man whose youth and manhood were
merely prosperous, whose old age was
Dpacious and ct ease. but who fell BY
nome fate in . few yards Of middle