heir to that which preceded. We make progress in
proportion as we wisely ponder significant events.

"McLean County had its historical beginning as a dependent but
distinct political organization on the joyous Christmas Day of
1830. Stretching backward from that date, its history is bound up
solely in that of Illinois, under its various organizations and
names. A brief time upon occasion such as this given to a hurried
review of the masterful epochs in the history of the great State
of which our own county is so important a part, cannot be wholly
misspent.

"Bearing in mind that 'that which comes after ever conforms to that
which has gone before,' significant events of the past must be
known, to the end that we intelligently comprehend the present,
and are enabled, even in scant measure, to forecast the future.

"No State of the American union has a history of more intense
interest than our own. Its early chapters, indeed, savor of the
romantic rather than of the real. I do not speak of the long-ago time
when Illinois forest and prairie were the house and hunting-ground
of the red men, and his frail bark the only craft known to its
rivers. That period belongs to the border-land age of tradition
rather than of veritable history. It is of Illinois under the
domination of civilized men I would speak.

"For near a century preceding the Treaty of Paris in 1763, 'the
Illinois country' was a part of the French domain. Inseparably
linked with that portion of its history are names that will live
with those of the Cabots and Columbus. The great navigator in his
lonely search for a new pathway to the Indies was buoyed by a
courage, a yearning for discovery, scarce greater than that which in
the heart of the new continent sustained the later voyagers and
discoverers, Marquette, Joliet, Hennepin, and La Salle.

"America's obligation to France is enduring--for explorers in
the seventeenth century no less than for defenders in that which
immediately followed. The historic page which tells of the
lofty heroism of Lafayette has for us no deeper interest than that
which records the daring achievements of the early French pathfinders
and voyagers. Two centuries and a half ago Marquette and
Joliet, bearing the commission of the French Governor of Quebec,
embarked upon their expedition for the discovery of new countries to
the southward. Animated by the earnest desire of extending the
blessings of religion no less than th