Poor Father Marquette! your journeys are almost over! Ill, weak, exhausted, the gentle priest had to be carried upon the shoulders of his faithful couriers de bois.
“Take me to the shore,” he said, weakly. “Build me a cabin and let me there give up my soul to Christ. I cannot live much longer and it is well. God’s will be done.”
Near the present city of Ludington, upon a plot of rising ground, the expiring Marquette selected a place to die. His companions made a rude, log cabin, laid him upon a bed of evergreens, over which were stretched his blankets, and, as the white-breasted woodthrush sang a soft cadence from the branch of the wild apple tree, the gentle soul of the explorer and Jesuit Missionary went to the Great Beyond. His rough boatmen clustered about him with tears in their eyes, and they have said that, as the noble man-of-God awaited Death, his countenance beamed and was aglow with the spark of a curious and brilliant radiance.
Spring came. Some Huron Indians, whom Marquette had instructed at his mission at La Pointe, heard of his death and burial as they were returning from a hunt in the vast woods of northern Michigan. They sought the grave of this good man, whom they had so tenderly loved. With reverent hands they removed him from his forest sepulchre, carried him to their canoe, and started back to the little chapel which he had built at St. Ignace.
Thirty canoes formed a funeral procession which passed along the Great Lakes for nearly two hundred and fifty miles. When the mission was reached, the cortége approached the land, where a vast concourse of Indians, trappers, soldiers, priests, and half-breeds, paid reverence to this sweet-souled Jesuit missionary. Here, in the little church, he was laid to rest, and here, in 1877, a splendid monument was erected to the memory of that noble Christian gentleman, who had floated down the turbid current of the Mississippi in a memorable journey of exploration. Pax vobiscum, Pere Marquette!
THE BURIAL OF GOOD FATHER MARQUETTE.
Lift him gently, redskinned brothers, let no voice disturb his rest,
Peace is here, the great blue heron wings his way from out the West.
The tiny wren is gently trilling; the swallow dips and darts around,