ults of his expedition. Nay, it would not have been unpardonable had
he desired to enjoy, after his labors, something of the consideration to
which their success entitled him. And, certainly, no man could ever have
approached his rulers with a better claim upon their notice than could
the unpretending _voyageur_. But vainglory was no more a part of his
nature, than was fear. The unaspiring priest remained at Green Bay, to
continue, or rather to resume, as a task laid aside only for a time, his
ministrations to the savages. Joliet hastened on to Quebec to report the
expedition, and Marquette returned to Chicago, for the purpose of
preaching the gospel to the Miami confederacy; several allied tribes who
occupied the country between Lake Michigan and the Des Moines river.
Here again he visited the Illinois, speaking to them of God, and of the
religion of Jesus; thus redeeming a promise which he had made them, when
on his expedition to the South.

But his useful, unambitious life was drawing to a close. Let us
describe its last scene in the words of our accomplished historian:--

"Two years afterward, sailing from Chicago to Mackinac, he entered a
little river in Michigan. Erecting an altar, he said mass, after the
rites of the Catholic church; then, begging the men who conducted his
canoe to leave him alone for a half hour,

"----'In the darkling wood,
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication.'

"At the end of the half hour they went to seek him, _and he was no
more_. The good missionary, discoverer of a world, had fallen asleep on
the margin of the stream that bears his name. Near its mouth, the
canoe-men dug his grave in the sand. Ever after, the forest rangers, in
their danger on Lake Michigan, would invoke his name. The people of the
West will build his monument."[69]

The monument is not yet built; though the name of new counties in
several of our western states testifies that the noble missionary is not
altogether forgotten, in the land where he spent so many self-denying
years.

Such was the _voyageur_ priest; the first, in chronological order, of
the succession of singular men who have explored and peopled the great
West. And though many who have followed him have been his equals in
courage and endurance, none have ever possessed the same combination of
heroic and unselfish qualities. It ought not to be true that this brief