His grief, however, is somewhat assuaged
when the tax gatherer calls, for, being outside of all political
boundaries, he has no taxes to pay.
[Footnote 6: For convenience to navigation, the islands in the lower
Mississippi, beginning at St. Louis, are numbered. Many of them,
however, have local names by which they are frequently known.]
Within a few years the town of Napoleon, which has already been
mentioned as the site which beheld the cross erected by Marquette and
the seizure of La Salle, was the scene of still another chapter in
history. Almost two hundred years from the time when Joliet and
Marquette beheld the historic ground, the river turned its current
against the banks, and in a few hours the crumbling walls of an old
stone building, half a mile or more from the river banks, were the
surviving monument that marked the former location of the town.
The Mississippi is indeed a grand study, and the people who have lived
in its valley during past ages have seen the river doing just what it
is doing to-day; and as race has succeeded race, each in turn has seen
the landmarks of its predecessors swept away by its angry flood and
buried beneath its sediment. Ever since the crests of the Appalachian
and Rocky Mountains were thrust up above the sea, the river has been
wearing them away, and bearing the scourings to the vast plain below.
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