[Footnote 2: Estimated at from 100,000 to 150,000 years. Such
estimates, however, are but little better than guesses.]
HISTORICAL.
Nearly three and a half centuries have elapsed since De Soto, that
prince among explorers, traversed the broad prairies that lie between
the border highlands of the Western continent, and beheld the stream
which watered the future empire of the world. His chroniclers tell us
that he was raised to an upright position, so that he could catch a
fleeting glimpse of the restless, turbulent flood; for even then the
hand of death was upon him, and soon its waters were to enshroud his
mortal remains. "His soldiers," says Bancroft, "pronounced his eulogy
by grieving for their loss, and the priests chanted over his body the
first requiems ever heard on the Mississippi. To conceal his death,
his body was wrapped in a mantle, and, in the stillness of midnight,
was silently sunk in the middle of the stream." Just across the river
the Arkansas was pouring in its tumultuous flood, and its confluence
was the site of the future town of Napoleon, which in coming years was
to be historic ground.
Worn by suffering, hardships and peril, and racked by the pestilential
fever that still hovers about the river lowlands, De Soto paid the
debt of nature, and his thrice decimated followers made their way back
to France.
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