FINDING THE MISSING LINK 

 winding through marshes, forests, and long tan- 

 gled vines, among its wooded islands, with here 

 and there there an opening in the forest. It 

 spreads its channel for miles and in many places 

 becomes a lonely, lily-fringed lake. Its bed in 

 the sand and clay forms its course to within a few 

 miles of Aomence, Illinois, where the rock 

 crops out and forms a great dam across the 

 stream. This dam was partly removed a few 

 years ago at a cost of seventy-five thousand 

 dollars. The Kankakee region was once a 

 heavy timbered country, but the forest fires have 

 greatly reduced its wood districts. The lofty 

 sycamore and the mammoth elm are still to be 

 found on the banks of the Kankakee, as they 

 were during the time when the fur-laden boats 

 of the French glided down the river. In the 

 early history of this continent it was the custom 

 of Spanish explorers to give it some special 

 geographical features by naming the place they 

 discovered after some Saint in a church-calen- 

 der, the day the discovery was made, in this 



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