“O Mackinac Island! rest long in thy glory! 
  Sweet native to peacefulness, home of delight! 
  Beneath thy soft ministry, care and sad worry
  Shall flee from the weary eyes blessed with thy sight.”

“That poet had taste,” remarked our friend when he had concluded.  “Beautiful Isle!  No wonder the great missionary wished his bones to rest within sight of its shores.  Marquette never seemed to me so great as now.  He was one of those Jesuits like Zinzendorf and Sebastian Ralle, wonderful men, all of them, full of energy and adventure and missionary zeal, and devoted to the welfare of their order.  At the age of thirty he was sent among the Hurons as a missionary.  He founded the mission of Sault de Ste. Marie in Lake Superior, in 1668, and three years later that of Mackinaw.  In 1673, in company with Joliet and five other Frenchmen, the adventurous missionary set out on a voyage toward the South Sea.  They followed the Mississippi to the Gulf, and returning, arrived at Green Bay in September.  In four months they had traveled a distance of twenty-five hundred miles in an open canoe.  Marquette was sick a whole year, but in 1674, at the solicitation of his superior, set out to preach to the Kaskaskia Indians.  He was compelled to halt on the way by his infirmities, and remained all winter at the place, with only two Frenchmen to minister to his wants.  As soon as it was spring, knowing full well that he could not live, he attempted to return to Mackinaw.  He died on the way, on a small river that bears his name, which empties into Lake Michigan on the western shore.  His memory en-wreathes the very names of Superior and Michigan with the halo of romance.”

“Thank you,” said Vincent, looking out over the dark water.  “I can fancy his ghost haunting the lake at midnight.”

“Speak not of that down at the Queen City,” returned Hugh, with a tragic air.  “Pork and grain are more substantial things than ghosts at Chicago, and they might look on you as an escaped lunatic.  Nathless, it was a pretty idea to promulgate among the Indians two centuries ago.  Observe how civilization has changed.  Two hundred years ago we sent missionaries among them:  now we send soldiers to shoot them down, after we have plundered them of their lands.”

Neither of us were disposed to discuss the Indian question with Hugh Warren, and the conversation dropped after a while.

At noon of the next day the steamer made Milwaukee, and the evening of the day after Chicago.  These two cities are excellent types of the Western city, and both show, in a wonderful degree, the rapid growth of towns in the great West.  Neither had an inhabitant before 1825, and now one has a population of one hundred thousand, and the other of five hundred thousand.  Chicago is, in fact, a wonder of the world.  Its unparalleled growth, its phoenix-like rise from the devastation of the great fire of 1871, and its cosmopolitan character, all contribute to render it a remarkable city.