be hopelessly ill. The savages observed that these children almost invariably died soon after the rites of baptism had been administered; thus they came to believe that the good missionary was a sorcerer or possessed of an evil spirit. They insulted him, scoffed at his teachings, and finally compelled him to admit that the two years he spent in the La Pointe region were almost barren of results. In 1671 the fierce Sioux began to harass the local tribes, and the latter scattered to the eastward. Marquette retired to the Mackinac region, where he founded the mission of St. Ignace, the most permanent of all his missionary posts, and the place where his remains found a final resting place. Not again for one hundred and sixty years was a religious service heard on the shores of Chequamegon Bay. No vestige remains of the old chapel of Allouez and Marquette; even its exact location is uncertain.

In 1693 Le Sueur built a fort on the south end of Madeline Island near the present village of La Pointe, and under the protection of the fort established a trading post. One of the reasons for this outpost was the necessity for safe water communication between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. The bitter conflict between the French and the Fox Indians, which lasted more than a quarter of a century, had closed the Fox-Wisconsin route. The substituted route between the lakes and the Mississippi was up the narrow and turbulent Bois Brule to its headwaters, whence a portage of one and one-half miles across willow marshes brought the traveler to the St. Croix River on the other side of the divide. Because of the frequent and almost insurmountable obstacles to canoe navigation, this route was little used after the Fox-Wisconsin waterway again became available.

In 1718 the French government reëstablished a military post at La Pointe, which was continuously garrisoned by the French during the first half of the eighteenth century. This post was in all probability located on Madeline Island and was officered by some of the most brilliant and enterprising of the young Frenchmen of the period. From official correspondence still extant, we catch glimpses of the servants of New France in this remote outpost. We learn from one of these letters that in 1733 Sieur de la Ronde was given the post at La Pointe, and with it a commission from the French monarch to work the copper mines of the Ontonagon region; but the record further shows that, because of the superstition of the natives, he met with serious difficulties in his quest for copper, and that nothing came of his efforts. Associated with de la Ronde in this abortive enterprise was Sieur St. Pierre, a grandson of Jean Nicolet.

It is recorded that in 1756 Beaubassin, the last French officer to command the post at La Pointe, left with his garrison and his Indian allies to engage in the war against England and the English colonies. After his departure, French traders, caring little about the military or political status of the territory, continued to ply their traffic with the natives until 1765, when Alexander Henry, an English trader, rebuilt or reopened the old trading post on Madeline Island. From the later records we have a scant history of the original settlement down to the time when the old harbor became choked with sand, and the village was moved two miles north to get a better water front.

A Congregational mission was established on the island in 1830, with Frederick Ayer in charge; the following year the Reverend Sherman Hall assumed direction of the work. This was the only mission post on Lake Superior in 1831.

In 1835 the Reverend Frederick Baraga, an Austrian of noble birth, reëstablished the Catholic mission at La Pointe after an interval of one hundred and sixty-four years from the time of the departure of Father Marquette. We have already seen that the chapel of Allouez and Marquette was built on the mainland and that every vestige of it had disappeared before the close of the French occupation. Father Baraga built his church in the original or abandoned village of La Pointe on Madeline Island. Regardless of these discrepancies, the Baraga church was pointed out many years afterward to unsuspecting tourists as the identical chapel built by Allouez and used by Marquette. It is only proper to state that the story was pure invention, was probably based on local tradition, and had no historical background whatever.

After years of faithful service in his wilderness environment, the much loved Father Baraga became a missionary bishop. He died in 1868. Of him a writer in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1868, said: "I have had the pleasure, once in my life, of conversing with an absolute gentleman; one in whom all the little vanities, all the little greedinesses, all the paltry fuss, worry, affectation, haste, and anxiety springing from imperfectly disciplined self-love-all had been consumed; and the whole man was kind, serene, urbane, and utterly sincere. This perfect gentleman was a Roman Catholic bishop who had spent thirty years of his life in the woods near Lake Superior."

The days of the old missionaries and explorers have passed forever, and thriving cities occupy the sites of the Indian villages of long ago. Instead of the sighing of the pines and the wash of the waves on the shore are heard the clamor and discordant noises of modern industry. The love story of Hiawatha and the life struggles of explorers and missionaries are remembered only on occasion and by the few. The islands of the region, reverently named the Apostle Group, have fared better, and the semblance of their former beauty is still apparent. As they are the favored haunts of thousands of summer tourists, there is reason to hope that their natural beauty will be preserved and even enhanced.

THE STORY OF A WISCONSIN SURVEYOR

JOHN B. VLIET

In the spring of 1835 Garret Vliet1 was county surveyor of Hamilton County, Ohio. In the latter part of May or early in June of that year, he set out for a journey on horseback from his home at Cincinnati to Green Bay, in the present state of Wisconsin, traveling in company with Byron Kilbourn. He was in Green Bay in June and went thence along the banks of Fox River to Lake Winnebago, examining the water powers on that river; and thence by trail, east of the lake, to the present site of the city of Fond du Lac, where he encamped on July 4, 1835. Thence he returned by trail, east of "Winnebago Swamp"-later Lake Horicon-to Milwaukee. At his encampment east of the swamp he was visited by two Indians. Soon after this, Ellsworth Burnett and James Clyman, while together on the same trail near the same place, were attacked stealthily in their camp by two Indians, and Burnett was killed and Clyman wounded, though he managed to escape. By comparing notes with Clyman afterward, Vliet was fairly well convinced that the two Indians were the same who visited him. The killing was to satiate the Indians' law of revenge, for which these two probably required two vic tims.

While at Green Bay, Mr. Kilbourn had secured title to the fractions of land along the west shore of the Milwaukee River from the section line in Canal Street, near the Menomonee, in the present city of Milwaukee, to the quarter section line just north of Walnut Street, and Garret Vliet was employed to survey the original village plat on the west side. This was completed prior to November 1, 1835.

To the present time-February, 1901-I have found no record, among his papers, of his movements during the time above referred to. The foregoing statements are from my recollections, founded in part on personal observation, but mostly on his story of his experiences. But, for something over a year thereafter his steps may be traced with considerable precision by data found among his papers, especially from a pocket memorandum and account book, copies of his field notes of surveys for the government, and his instructions from the surveyor general in regard to these surveys and that is the object of this paper.

The memorandum book shows that he was in Milwaukee November 1 and in Cincinnati November 19, 1835. About two weeks of the intervening time he spent on the road between these points, riding his faithful horse, Ned.

On or before the first of December following, he was appointed a United States deputy surveyor and assigned to the survey of a district of ten townships of public lands lying west and northwest of Milwaukee. These consisted of townships 7, 8, 9 in ranges 18, 19, 20, and township 7 in range 21. His special instructions from the surveyor general, Robert T. Lytle, at Cincinnati, bear the date December 1, 1835. He procured his tent and the principal part of his supplies for the work, at Cincinnati, employed George P. Delaplaine, Samuel Frazey, Samuel Spivey, and Richard Short there as assistants, and proceeded with them and the outfit on a steamboat down the Ohio River and up the Wabash, en route for the field of operations. The probability is that they left Cincinnati on the twenty-first or twenty-second of January, 1836. Elisha Dwelle, who had been, I think, chief clerk in the surveyor general's office, was at the same time assigned to the survey of the district adjoining that of Vliet on the south. He probably accompanied the party; his outfit was shipped with Vliet's-he paying one-half the charges to Chicago.

We next find them, on the twenty-seventh, at Merom on the Wabash midway between Vincennes and Terre Haute. It is most probable that they were then proceeding by land-their steamer having been prevented by ice from ascending the Wabash farther than Vincennes or that vicinity. The weather became very cold that winter. At Cincinnati the Ohio was frozen over for some days, so that teams crossed on the ice (I crossed on foot). This cold weather probably set in about the time the steamer entered the Wabash. The reason for attempting this winter trip was the urgency that the surveys should be completed at the