Prologue
France formerly possessed in North America a vast empire, extending from Labrador to the Floridas, and from the shores of the Atlantic to the most distant lakes of Upper Canada.
Four great rivers, deriving their sources from the same mountains, divided these immense regions: the river St. Lawrence, which is lost to the east in the gulf of that name; the Western River, whose waters flow on to seas unknown; the river Bourbon, which runs from south to north into Hudson’s Bay; and the Mississippi, whose waters fall from north to south into the Gulf of Mexico.
The last-named river, in its course of more than a thousand leagues, waters a delicious country, called by the inhabitants of the United States the New Eden, to which the French left the pretty appellation of Louisiana. A thousand other rivers, tributaries of the Mississippi—the Missouri, the Illinois, the Arkansas, the Wabache, the Tennessee—enrich it with their mud and fertilize it with their waters. When all these rivers have been swollen by the deluges of winter, uprooted trees, forming large portions of forests torn down by tempests, crowd about their sources. In a short time the mud cements the torn trees together, and they become enchained by creepers, which, taking root in every direction, bind and consolidate the débris. Carried away by the foaming waves, the rafts descend to the Mississippi, which, taking possession of them, hurries them down towards the Gulf of Mexico, throws them upon sandbanks, and so increases the number of its mouths. At intervals the swollen river raises its voice whilst passing over the resisting heaps, and spreads its overflowing waters around the colonnades of the forests, and the pyramids of the Indian tombs: and so the Mississippi is the Nile of these deserts. But grace is always united to splendor in the scenes of Nature: while the mid-stream bears away towards the sea the dead trunks of pine-trees and oaks, the lateral currents on either side convey along the shores floating islands of pistias and nenuphars, whose yellow roses stand out like little pavilions. Green serpents, blue herons, pink flamingoes, and baby crocodiles embark as passengers on these rafts of flowers; and the brilliant colony, unfolding to the wind its golden sails, glides along slumberingly till it arrives at some retired creek in the river.
