Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 7).djvu/21

 geography which so much influenced it. It is to the earliest days of our country's history that our attention is attracted—to the days when the French came to the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and sought to know and possess the interior of the continent, to which each shining tributary of the northern water system offered a passage way. Passing the question how and why New France was founded on the St. Lawrence, it is enough for us to know she was there before the seventeenth century dawned, and that her fearless voyageurs, undaunted by the rushing tides of that great stream, were pushing on to a conquest of the temperate empire which lay to the southward. Here in treacherous eddies, the foaming rapids, and the mighty current of that river, they were soon taught the woodland art of canoeing, by the most savage of masters; and in canoes the traders, trappers, missionaries, explorers, hunters, and pioneers were soon stemming the current of every stream that flowed from the south.

But these streams found their sources in this highland we are treading. Heedless