EARLY SETTLEMENT BY FRENCH. 99 



of the way is timbered like Canada ; indeed, all the western 

 shore of Lake Michigan is so. There are oak openings here 

 and there, which are little prairies of rather sandy soil in the 

 midst of the woods, and which are all cultivated. The wood- 

 land is a reddish soil lying on gravelly hills, which is found to 

 produce a good quality of wheat, the Milwaukee wheat holding 

 a high character in the American market. The Indian corn 

 seemed a small crop, and not much cultivated. After passing 

 Horicon we enter on fine prairie, which continues for many 

 miles through the county of Marquette, but all good land here, 

 where improved, is, if anything, dearer than in Illinois. To 

 the north of this the country is marshy or sandy, and, still far- 

 ther north, it is all covered with pine timber, the great tim- 

 ber region of Wisconsin, which yields more than 500 millions 

 of feet of lumber in a year. Green Bay, which is a sheltered 

 arm of Lake Michigan, 100 miles long and 30 broad, was the 

 site of one of the earliest French settlements more than 200 

 years ago. 



It is a remarkable fact, that before the pilgrim fathers land- 

 ed at Plymouth, nay, even before the English cavaliers settled 

 in Virginia, this far western country had been discovered by 

 the French, who had sailed up the St. Lawrence and the lakes 

 from Quebec, and whose missionaries, as early as 1624, were 

 preaching the Gospel to the Indians on lakes Huron and Su- 

 perior. By degrees, under the policy of Louis XIV., they 

 stretched to the Mississippi, and were the first Europeans who 

 held that magnificent valley from nearly its source to New Or- 

 leans. For a century they continued to hold the entire control 

 of the North- West, till, in 1758, Wolfe's victory over Mont- 

 calm at Quebec wrested this dominion from the French. The 

 poor French Canadians of Lower Canada are the only record 

 of their power, and Green Bay, one seat of their first appear- 

 ance in the west, is now being rapidly settled with Germans 



