He was weak. The heavy water nearly overcame him. The landing was difficult, his companion was a dead weight. Several times on the point of sinking, he did not give up, but made the shore by supreme efforts. Taking Pauger on his back, he started for the post. The garrison saw him and came running out with welcoming shouts.
The sun was bright, the air clear, the whole happy world looked good to Anthony. He had taken part in great events and had seen many noble men whom two nations remember with gratitude. He little dreamed that in all the history of the Great River there were few explorers more heroic than he had been that day.
AFTERWORD
AS the boys of bygone days grew to be men they handed down to other lads in the stories of their adventures the history of the events which had happened to them and the things they had learned from experience.
If it were not for the knowledge thus accumulated and given to us by many past generations the young Americans of these times would still be running about naked, fighting with sharp stones, and eating one another with the appetite and manners of the first savages.
When the United States bought the country called Louisiana she acquired much more than the land; she received also the recorded experiments and the results of the hard work of the French for more than a hundred years.
Their successes and their failures, their romantic struggles, their dauntless spirit, their ideals of fair play, were all a part of the same inheritance.
Wherever a French explorer set his wandering feet there has since followed an American business man to develop the fabulous wealth of those first discoveries.