an object might seem to be worth." England, in establishing its relations with America, whether as dependencies or as states, reserved to itself complete freedom.

Meantime, Vergennes, on the twelfth of February, forwarded the draft of a convention which yielded to Spain all that she required, except that its fourth article maintained the independence of the United States. "In respect to this," he wrote, "our engagements are precise, and it is not possible for us to retract them. Spain must share them, if she makes common cause with us." Yet the article was persistently cavilled at, as in itself useless, and misplaced in a treaty of France with Spain; and Florida Blanca remarked with ill-humor how precisely the treaty stipulated "that arms should not be laid down" till American independence should be obtained, while it offered only a vague promise "of every effort" to procure the objects in which Spain was interested. "Efface the difference," answered Montmorin, "and employ the same expressions for both stipulations." The Spanish minister caught at the unwary offer, and in this way it was agreed that peace should not be made without the restoration of Gibraltar. Fired by the prospect which now opened before him, the king of Spain pictured to himself the armies of France breaking in upon the English at their firesides; and Florida Blanca said to Montmorin: "The news of the rupture must become first known to the world by a landing in England. With union, secrecy, and firmness, we shall be able to put our enemies under our feet; but no decisive blow can be struck at the English except in England itself."

All this time the Spanish minister avoided fixing the epoch for joint active measures. "The delay," said Vergennes, "can be attributed only to that spirit of a pettifogger which formed the essence of his first profession. I cry out less at his repugnance to guarantee American independence; to suitable concessions from the Americans we assuredly make no opposition."

Discussing with Montmorin the article relating to the Americans, Florida Blanca said: "The king, my master, will never acknowledge their independence, until the English themselves shall be forced to recognise it by the peace. He fears the example which he should otherwise give to his own pos

sessions." "As well acknowledge their independence as accord them assistance," began Montmorin; but the minister cut him short, saying: "Nothing will come of your insisting on this article."

Now that no more was to be gained, Florida Blanca made a draft of a convention, and suddenly presented it to Montmorin. A few verbal corrections were agreed upon, and on the evening of the twelfth of April the treaty was signed.

By its terms, France bound herself to undertake the invasion of Great Britain or Ireland; if she could drive the British from Newfoundland, its fisheries were to be shared only with Spain. For trifling benefits to be acquired for herself, she promised to use every effort to recover for Spain Minorca, Pensacola and Mobile, the bay of Honduras and the coast of Campeachy; and the two courts bound themselves not to grant peace, nor truce, nor suspension of hostilities, until Gibraltar should be restored.

This convention of France with Spain modified the treaty between France and America. The Americans were not bound to continue the war till Gibraltar should be taken; still less, till Spain should have carried out a policy hostile to their interests. They gained the right to make peace whenever Great Britain would recognise their independence.

The Mississippi river is the guardian and the pledge of the union of the states of America. Had they been confined to the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, there would have been no geographical unity between them, and the thread of connection between states that merely fringed the Atlantic must soon have been sundered. The father of rivers gathers his waters from all the clouds that break between the Alleghanics and the farthest ranges of the Rocky Mountains. The ridges of the eastern chain bow their heads at the North and at the South; so that, long before science became the companion of man, nature herself pointed out to the barbarous races that short portages join his tributary rivers to those of the Atlantic coast. At the other side, his mightiest arm interlocks with arms of the Oregon and the Colorado, and marshals highways to the Pacific. As from the remotest springs he bears many waters to the bosom of the ocean, the myriads of flags

that wave above them are the ensigns of one people. States larger than kingdoms flourish where he passes; and, beneath his step, cities start into being, more marvellous in their reality than the fabled creations of enchantment. His magnificent valley, lying in the best part of the temperate zone, salubrious and fertile, is the chosen muster-ground of the most various elements of human culture brought together by men, summoned from all the civilized nations of the earth and joined in the bonds of common citizenship by the attraction of republican freedom. Now that science has come to be the household friend of trade and commerce and travel, and that nature has lent to wealth and intellect the use of her constant forces, the hills, once walls of division, are scaled or pierced or levelled; and the two oceans, between which the republic has unassailably intrenched itself against the outward world, are bound together across the continent by friendly links of iron.

From the great destiny foretold by the possession of that river and the lands which it drains, the Bourbons of Spain, hoping to act in concert with Great Britain as well as France, would have shut out the United States even on its eastern side.

While the absolute monarch of the Spanish dominions and his minister thought to exclude the republic from the valley of the Mississippi, a power emerged from its forests to bring their puny policy to nought. An enterprise is now to be recorded which, for the valor of the actors, their fidelity to one another, the seeming feebleness of their means, and the great result of their hardihood, remains forever memorable in the history of the world. On the sixth of June 1776, the emigrants to the region west of the Louisa river, at a general meeting in Harrodston, elected George Rogers Clark, then midway in his twenty-fourth year, and one other, to represent them in the assembly of Virginia, with a request that their settlements might be constituted a county. Before they could cross the mountains, the legislature of Virginia had declared independence, established a government, and adjourned. In a later session they were not admitted to seats in the house; but on the sixth of December 1776 the westernmost part of the state was incorporated by the name of "the county of Kentucky."

As Clark on his return descended the Ohio, he brooded over the conquest of the land to the north of the river. In the summer of 1777 he sent two young hunters to reconnoitre the French villages in Illinois and on the Wabash.

In the latter part of 1777 Clark took leave of the woodsmen of Kentucky and departed for the East. To a few at Williamsburg, of whom no one showed more persistent zeal than George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, he proposed a secret expedition to the Illinois. Patrick Henry, the governor, made the plan his own; and, at his instance, the house of delegates, by a vote of which "few knew the intent," empowered him to aid "any expedition against their western enemies." On the second of January 1778, Clark received from the governor and council a supply of money, liberty to levy troops in any county of Virginia, and written and verbal instructions, clothing him with large discretionary authority to attack the British dominion on the Illinois and the Wabash. Hastening to the frontier, he established recruiting parties from the head of the Ohio to the Holston. At Redstone-old-fort, with the cordial aid of Hand, its commander, he collected boats, light artillery, and ammunition. It was probably there that he met with Captain William Harrod and his company.* There, too, he was overtaken by Captain Leonard Helm of Fauquier, and by Captain Joseph Bowman of Frederic, each with less than half a company. These and the adventurers of his own enlistment, together only one hundred and fifty men, but all of a hardy race, self-relying, and trusting in one another, he was now to lead near a thousand miles from their former homes against a people who exceeded them in number and were aided by merciless tribes of savage allies. At Fort Kanawha, in May, they were reinforced by Captain O'Hara and his company. On the day of an eclipse of the sun they glided over the falls of the Ohio, below which they were "joined by a few Kentuckians" under John Montgomery. On the twenty-sixth of June, Clark and his companions, Virginians in the service of Virginia, set off from the falls, and, with oars double-manned, proceeded night and day on their ever-memorable enterprise. From Detroit, Hamilton, the lieutenant-governor, sent *MS. memorandum of L. C. Draper.

abroad along the American frontier parties of savages, whose reckless cruelty won his applause; and he schemed attempts against the "rebel forts on the Ohio," relying on the red men of the prairies and the white men of Vincennes. The reports sent to Germain made him believe that the inhabitants of that settlement, though "a poor people who thought themselves cast off from his majesty's protection, were firm in their allegiance to defend it against all enemies," and that hundreds in Pittsburg remained at heart attached to the crown.

On the invasion of Canada in 1775, Carleton, to strengthen the posts of Detroit and Niagara, had withdrawn the small British garrison from Kaskaskia, and the government was left in the hands of Rocheblave, a Frenchman, who had neither troops nor money. "I wish," he wrote in February 1778, "the nation might come to know one of its best possessions, and consent to give it some encouragement; and he entreated Germain that a lieutenant-governor might be despatched with a company of soldiers to reside in Illinois.

Apprised of the condition of Kaskaskia by a band of hunters, Clark ran his boats into a creek a mile above Fort Massac, reposed there but for a night, and struck across the hills to the great prairie. On the treeless plain his party, "in all about one hundred and eighty," could be seen for miles around by nations of Indians, able to fall on them with three times their number; yet they were in the highest spirits; and "he felt as never again in his life a flow of rage," an intensity of will, a zeal for action. Approaching Kaskaskia on the fourth of July 1778, in the darkness of evening he surprised the town, and without bloodshed seized Rocheblave, the commandant. The inhabitants gladly bound themselves to fealty to the United States. A detachment under Bowman was despatched to Kahokia, and received its submission. The people, of French origin and few in number, were averse to the dominion of the English; and this disaffection was confirmed by the American alliance with the land of their ancestors.

In a long conference, Gibault, a Catholic priest, dissuaded Clark from moving against Vincennes. His own offer of mediation being accepted, he, with a small party, repaired to the post; and its people, having listened to his explanation