Identifier: undercrownameric00yout (find matches)
Title: ... Under the crown, American history;
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Youth companion
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, Mass., P. Mason company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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r the map of the GreatLakes and the Mississippi Valley, and you maysee at a glance the route of the Jesuit father,Marquette, from the Canadian north to GreenBay, and thence to the Wisconsin River. It was early summer when Marquette launchedhis canoes on the Wisconsin. On June 17,1673, beyond the blooming bluffs a great tidemet the Wisconsin at a place where is now thecity of Prairie du Chien. The canoe of Marquettedrifted down the greater stream, and the pilot-missionary found himself on the Mississippi. It has been asserted that La Salle saw theMississippi before Marquette; but La Salle him-self, in whose enterprise both Marquette andJoliet were engaged, never asserted a title tothe discovery. MARQUETTES DISCOVERY. 63 As Marquette passed down the great river thatopened to him, his eye was suddenly arrested bythe effigies of two dragons on the high bluffs,or rocks, at a point near where the city of Altonnow stands. Each effigy, he says, was asbig as a calf. They were colored green and
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HIS EYE WAS SUDDENLY ARRESTED. red, had scales, and the tails were wound roundtheir bodies and ended like fishes. Marquette was, to use his own language, filledwith terror at the sight. He believed that theevil one was the lord of the wilderness, despitethe sunshine, the song-birds and flowers, andthat this dark dominion was to disappear beforethe coming of the Cross. Marquette made a sketch of the two dragons 64 MARQUETTES DISCOVERY. of the Mississippi. It was preserved by theFrench intendants of Canada, and copies of itare yet to be seen. The Dragon Rocks have crumbled. In i860the pictures had disappeared, and about thatdate efforts were made to restore them. Butthe hammers of science have wholly changedthe appearance of the place, which for sometwo hundred years was known, and appeared onold maps, as Castle Rocks. Marquette passed the mounds where St. Louisnow stands, and the mouths of the three rivers,the Missouri, the Illinois and the Ohio. Thesummer deepened; the world grew more

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