OCR Text |
Show What Fiance Lost AS one looks upon a map of the United States and Canada, his wonder is excited at the thought -of what might have been had Montcalm instead of Wolfe been victor on the Plains of Abraham. The French had both banks of the St. Lawrence from its mouth to its source; their hunters and trappers were on both shores of the Great Lakes and they had founded St. Louis and New Orleans and many other towns along the Mississippi, controlling the great river and unlike the Anglo-Saxon they affiliated without with-out trouble with the Indians. One can see at a glance what an empire they commanded. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, with all the adjacent territory o world In itself. Suppose they wad possessed the prescience to merely keep the peace at home, and devoted the chief power of the paient country coun-try to developing and making secure their possessions posses-sions in the new world, sending all their restless spirits this way, how different might have been French and English history, and how circumscribed circum-scribed would have been the United States. Napoleon Na-poleon had visions of what Louisiana would be, but ho saw that as history had progressed he could not hold it; that if he tried to, it would become be-come the prey of England. So he sold it, remai'k-Ing remai'k-Ing as he did, that it might some time become a thorn and menace in the side of his great rival. He lived to see the wild riflemen of the wilderness wilder-ness destroy a picked division of the army of Great Britain in a victory so pronounced that he sent an agent to see what kind of guns those backwoodsmen back-woodsmen used in that slaughter of Packingham and his army. When it was reported that they had nothing but the long muzzle loading Mississippi rifle, he quickly remarked: "I see; it was the men behind. the guns," and doubtless his stormy soul went out in admiration of them. At tho time, (he was throne building in some petty states, petty com- f pared with what he sold for a song, but then it .was too late for Napoleon. The defeat In Ameri- .Ica was twenty years before he was of an age to lufpomprehond what France was losing; indeed, our L'Sown countrymen did not comprehend the mag- llnificence of what they had won for forty eyars jliaftor they were in peaceable possession of It. But In think of what an, empire France really had; from Vjjtho St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico by way of aflthe two great rivers and the lakes and all the jflfadjoining lands. It Includes the St. Lawrence val- ley and all north o there, the Mississippi and Missouri valleys and all the legion near. Most of the cotton and wheat and corn area of the new world, and at a time, too, when Great Britain was content with the thirteen colonies and her part of the West Indies. Of course, there might have heen later wars. France might have been as unfortunate un-fortunate as was Spain with her new world possessions, pos-sessions, but she had the chance to be the very ruling nation of the earth. Then, may be it was even then decided that the Anglo-Saon should have possession and that a great realm should be dedicated to freedom and the rights of man. Who knows? |