ouisiana. It is
still unpublished; and it informed the Government that "from
various reports of Canadian and Indian hunters it is possible to
walk from Missouri to the sea in less than two months and a
half."

An access to the Pacific was not so easy as now, but yet an
access was practicable, and the wealth of the country was
extraordinary. Warming at the souvenir of what he knew, the
retired officer exclaimed, "What sources of wealth can we not
expect to find in those parts! At each step made from east to
west all produce, all things increase tenfold. It seems as if
nature had made this corner of the globe the most favored one of
our immense empire. The samples of all reigns have more beauty
and majesty than anywhere else. The men born there look more
like the descendants of Alcides than the kinsmen of the tribes
who worship Manitou."

The main motive power, without which all the others would have
been of no avail, was, indeed, mutual sympathy. When the treaty
was signed the three negotiators, Barbe-Marbois, Monroe, and
Livingston, who had known each other in America at the time of
the war of Independence, rose, and, what is rare on such
occasions, one of them was able to express in a single sentence
the intimate feelings of the three. "The treaty which we have
just signed," said Livingston, "will cause no tears; they
prepare centuries of happiness to innumerable generations of
human beings; from this day the United States take their place
among the powers of the first rank."

I do not think that there is another example in the history of
the world of a cession of such vast territories thus obtained by
the representatives of one of the parties to the applause and
with the heartfelt consent of the representatives of the other.

The treaty giving away in full possession and forever Louisiana
to the United States, allowing them to spread without meeting
any foreign neighbors from one ocean to the other, adding
fourteen States to the original thirteen, was signed one hundred
years ago, "au nom du peuple Francais" in the year XI of the
French Republic. The results have passed the most sanguine
hopes, but they have not gone beyond the extent of our friendly
wishes for the sister Republic of America. The representative of
France comes to this spot that was French in