And a warrior, pale and bloody,
Told her with abated accent;
How, her lover fighting nobly,
In the front of fiercest battle,
Had surrendered to the War God.
Weep poor ivy Manahella!

Never more your heart can cling
To your lordly oak of forest,
To the noble Antakaya.

And the heart of Manahella,

Broke, with all its weight of grieving,
Joined the fire flies of the evening.

But Antakaya sorely wounded
Fled with honor only left him
After days of weary travel,
Reached the shores of Arolachy,
Sought in vain for Manahella.
And he shouted in his madness
Manahella! Manahella!

Gory scalps, I could not bring thee,
But it was not lack of courage:
Evil spirits did command me,
Manito will surely help us.

Only come, and bring me pardon.
Loud and long, he vainly called her,
But the echo only mocked him.
Then a bright light, pure and holy,
Shone on the troubled Antakaya.
In its radiance clear and lovely
He saw the soul of Manahella.
All the night he followed blindly,
Praying it to stop and pardon:

When the day broke, cold and clammy,
To the great Lake Shore he stumbled.
And, he saw the beacon swallowed,
By the waters dark and gloomy.
All that day, he weakly labored,
Hollowed out a mighty tree trunk;
From a branch he hewed a paddle:
At the close of day he finished.
With the dark, came Wah-wah-taysee,
O'er the troubled waves he followed,
Called the soul of Manahella:

When the sun, with shining armor,

From the great lake came up slowly,

The lost soul of Manahella,

In its arms took Antakaya.'

Kaskaskia was now visibly on the decline. It was only sustained by the facilities it offered to trade in the river highways, but here it was greatly handicapped by larger places on the north and south. In 1833 a colony of nine nuns from the Convent of Visitation at Georgetown, D. Č., started an academy for girls at Kaskaskia and it bade fair to become a school of importance. This academy was after the flood of 1844 removed to St. Louis where it became of great importance.

In 1844 came the greatest flood of all and Kaskaskia was almost destroyed. Water stood five feet deep in the old hotel building where

1. See the English translation. (Philadelphia, 1829), vol. 1, pp. 136-147. [ED.]

the high water of 1785 had only reached the floor. The bottom was covered many feet deep. Steamboats sailed from bluff to bluff. Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis, chartered a steamboat and went to Kaskaskia, where the young ladies of the convent were drawn through the second story windows to the boat. On April 20, 1881, the neck of land separating the Kaskaskia and Mississippi rivers was washed away. Three days after the cut off was made steamboats passed through the new channel. Since that time the State of Illinois has moved the bodies in the old grave yard to Chester and the site of the old town has steadily crumbled away.

The story of Kaskaskia is but the story of the germ. It is, is planted, produces the seedling, the stalk. It does not die it but gives up its being to the plant. Older than St. Louis or New Orleans, this mission post, voyageur's rest, garrison town, capital of all the empire between the Alleghenys and Rockies, this district capital, territorial capital, State capital, lives only in history as a place to hang a story on, as a dream for the poet. The river has changed its course; the town has disappeared beneath the waves; the Indians have been destroyed; voyaging and hunting for a living are no longer occupations; the bark canoe has been displaced by the steamboat, which now in its turn gives way to the railroad. Yet, Kaskaskia and her interesting types and people were influences, causes of great events, and the dream is a pleasant one.

PART III.

Contributions to State History.