Thus were the offshoots of the two greatest and most cultivated and refined of modern nations, vis-a-vis, in the heart of the American continent. Soon the song of the voyageur,
"Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian vineyards,"
as he floated with the stream, or propelled his batteaux against the current, with pole, and line, and oar, and sail, was hushed forever. Soon the panting of the steamer awoke the long silent echos of the bluffs and startled the aquatic fowl from lagoon and bayou. Soon the swelling tide of a more advanced civilization rolled westward over the prairies, and the "common" of the rustic village, upon whose verdant sward and beneath whose branching elms, enamoured swains and blushing maidens,
"Wearing their Norman caps, and their kirtles of blue, and the ear rings Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heir loom, Handed down from mother to child, through long generations,"
had been wont to "trip the light fantastic toe" to rude and simple music, was illumined with the camp fires and whitened with the wagon covers of the Saxon emigrant. Soon the alloted arpents which, in the exercise of "squatter sovereignty," had been appropriated by each family as a home lot, were surveyed, divided, staked and sold, and an embryo city was rising thereon. Soon the quaint and moss covered church, where Vesper, Matin and Mass had erst been said, chanted and sung, gave place to the "meeting house" of another creed and faith.
The early French explorers established a post at Buffalo Rock which, it is believed, was the first attempt at settlement by Europeans, in the valley of the Mississippi. This presumption is supported by the following facts. De Soto, after his two years wandering among the everglades of Florida and the swamps and mountains of what is now Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, arrived on the bank of the "Great river" in 1541, "but founded no settlement, left no traces, and produced no effects, unless to excite the hostility of the red against the white man." One hundred and thirty-two years later--1673--Marquette passed up the Fox of Wisconsin, across the portage, and down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi, and returned by way of the Illinois. But he, too, according to Joliet, who was his companion, "founded no settlement, and left no traces." These two expeditions contained the only Europeans that ever set foot in the Great Valley until La Salle, five years later, passed down the Illinois. His route was up the St. Joseph in Michigan, across the portage by the Kankakee, and down that stream to the Illinois, upon the banks of which he made his first halt and built Rock Fort, where he established a Mission and settlement, but which was afterwards abandoned, the inhabitants taking themselves to Fort Crevecour. That Buffalo Rock was the site of Rock Fort is probable from the name, as well as from its superior advantages for such an establishment over any other place in the valley, from the confluence of the Kankakee to Peoria. This supposition is sustained by Perkins, Sparks and Bancroft. A year or two ago, a brass kettle was found in this locality, imbedded in a strata of coal which runs through this singular eminence. It was reported to have been overlaid by a regular seriated, unbroken coal formation; but as this statement is opposed to received geological theories, it is reasonable to suppose that it was deposited by design or accident, in an excavation made by these settlers.