ingle-hearted and devoted ministers of religion, and he found a fitting
instrument in the young and ardent Robert de la Salle, a Frenchman of
enterprise and sagacity, worldly enough in his motives, but of
indomitable energy and perseverance. He was very successful in
establishing commerce in furs and other productions of the country, but
lost his life somewhere near the mouth of the Mississippi, which he
first explored, after escaping a thousand dangers. His name is famous in
the land, and a large town was called after it; but what would he say if
he heard his patronymic transformed into 'Lay-sell,' as it is,
universally, among the 'natives'?

It is in La Salle's first _proces verbal_ for his government that we
find the first mention of the river 'Chekagou,' a lonely stream then,
but which now reflects a number of houses and stores, tall steeples,
colossal grain depots, and--the splendid edifice which fitly enshrines
the northern terminus of the Illinois Central Railroad, the greatest
railway in the world, and certainly one of the wonders which even the
ambitious and sanguine La Salle never dreamed of; a daily messenger of
light and life through seven hundred miles of country, which, without
it, would have remained a wilderness to this day.

The first settler on the banks of this now so famous river was a black
man from St. Domingo, Jean Baptiste Point-au-Sable by name, who brought
some wealth with him, and built a residence which must have seemed grand
for that time and place. He did not stay long, however, and the Indians,
who had probably suffered some things from the arrogance of their white
neighbors, thought it a good joke to say that 'the first 'white man'
that settled there was a negro.' Like some other jokes, this one seems
to have rankled deep and long, for to this day Illinois tolerates
neither negro nor Indian. The Indian, _as_ an Indian, has no foothold in
the State; and the negro, even in the guise of born and skilled laborer
in the production of the crops which form the wealth of the country, and
of the new ones which are to be transplanted hither in consequence of
the war, is forbidden, under heavy penalties, to set foot within her
boundaries--the threat of slavery, like a flaming sword, guarding the
entrance of this paradise of the laborer.

Illinois has not suffered as much in tone and character from
unprincipled speculators as some others of the new States. Her early
settlers were generally men of m