1764.] ITS EARLY COLONIZATION. 249 



from his slumbers. His neck is arched ; the white 

 fangs gleam in his distended jaws ; his small eyes 

 dart rays of unutterable fierceness ; and his rattles, 

 invisible with their quick vibration, ring the sharp 

 warning which no man will dare to contemn. 



The land thus prodigal of good and evil, so 

 remote from the sea, so primitive in its aspect, 

 might well be deemed an undiscovered region, 

 ignorant of European arts ; yet it may boast a 

 colonization as old as that of many a spot to which 

 are accorded the scanty honors of an American 

 antiquity. The earliest settlement of Pennsylvania 

 was made in 1G81 ; the first occupation of the 

 Illinois took place in the previous year. La Salle 

 may be called the father of the colony. That re- 

 markable man entered the country with a handful 

 of followers, bent on his grand scheme of Missis- 

 sippi discovery. A legion of enemies rose in his 

 path ; but neither delay, disappointment, sickness, 

 famine, open force, nor secret conspiracy, could 

 bend his soul of iron. Disasters accumulated 

 upon him. He flung them ofl", and still pressed 

 forward to his object. His victorious energy bore 

 all before it ; but the success on which he had 

 staked his life served only to entail fresh calamity, 

 and an untimely death ; and his best reward is, 

 that his name stands forth in history an imperish- 

 able monument of heroic constancy. When on his 



whole system of animated beings. Nature endues them with proper 

 capacities to sustain Hfe : as they cannot support themselves by their 

 speed or cunning, to spring from an ambuscade, it is needful they should 

 have the bewitching craft of their eyes and forked tongues." — Adair, 

 237. 



