THE RIVER AND ITS HISTORY.

9

sionarying among them, and drawing whole populations of them at a
time to Quebec, and later to Montreal, to buy furs of them. Neces-
sarily, then, these various clusters of whites must have heard of the
great river of the far west; and indeed, they did hear of it vagnely,—
so vaguely and indefinitely, that its course, proportions, and locality
were hardly even guessable. The mere mysteriousness of the matter
ought to have fired curiosity and compelled exploration; but this did
not occur. Apparently nobody happened to want such a river,

CANADIAN INDIANS.
nobody needed it, nobody was curious about it; so, for a century and
a half the Mississippi remained out of the market and undisturbed.
When De Soto found it, he was not hunting for a river, and had no
present occasion for one; consequently he did not value it or even
take any particular notice of it.
But at last La Salle the Frenchman conceived the idea of seeking
out that river and exploring it. It always happens that when a
man seizes upon a neglected and important idea, people inflamed
with the same notion crop up all around. It happened so in this
instance.