measurements, and cataloguing the colors by their scientific names;–as a
result, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but you don’t see the sunset.
It would have been better to paint a picture of it.
The date 1542, standing by itself, means little or nothing to us;
but when one groups a few neighboring historical dates and facts
around it, he adds perspective and color, and then realizes that this
is one of the American dates which is quite respectable for age.
For instance, when the Mississippi was first seen by a white man, less than
a quarter of a century had elapsed since Francis I.’s defeat at Pavia;
the death of Raphael; the death of Bayard, SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE;
the driving out of the Knights-Hospitallers from Rhodes by the Turks;
and the placarding of the Ninety-Five Propositions,–the act which
began the Reformation. When De Soto took his glimpse of the river,
Ignatius Loyola was an obscure name; the order of the Jesuits was not
yet a year old; Michael Angelo’s paint was not yet dry on the Last
Judgment in the Sistine Chapel; Mary Queen of Scots was not yet born,
but would be before the year closed. Catherine de Medici was a child;
Elizabeth of England was not yet in her teens; Calvin, Benvenuto Cellini,
and the Emperor Charles V. were at the top of their fame,
and each was manufacturing history after his own peculiar fashion;
Margaret of Navarre was writing the ‘Heptameron’ and some religious books,–
the first survives, the others are forgotten, wit and indelicacy
being sometimes better literature preservers than holiness;
lax court morals and the absurd chivalry business were in full feather,
and the joust and the tournament were the frequent pastime of titled fine
gentlemen who could fight better than they could spell, while religion
was the passion of their ladies, and classifying their offspring
into children of full rank and children by brevet their pastime.
In fact, all around, religion was in a peculiarly blooming condition:
the Council of Trent was being called; the Spanish Inquisition was roasting,
and racking, and burning, with a free hand; elsewhere on the continent
the nations were being persuaded to holy living by the sword and fire;
in England, Henry VIII. had suppressed the monasteries, burnt Fisher
and another bishop or two, and was getting his English reformation
and his harem effectively started. When De Soto stood on the banks
of the Mississippi, it was still two years before Luther’s death;
eleven years before the burning of Servetus; thirty years before
the St. Bartholomew slaughter; Rabelais was not yet published;
‘Don Quixote’ was not yet written; Shakespeare was not yet born;
a hundred long years must still elapse before Englishmen would hear the name
of Oliver Cromwell.
Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datable
fact which considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newness
of our country, and gives her a most respectable outside-aspect
of rustiness and antiquity.
De Soto merely glimpsed the river, then died and was buried
in it by his priests and soldiers. One would expect the priests
and the soldiers to multiply the river’s dimensions by ten–
the Spanish custom of the day–and thus move other adventurers
to go at once and explore it. On the contrary, their narratives
when they reached home, did not excite that amount of curiosity.
The Mississippi was left unvisited by whites during a term
of years which seems incredible in our energetic days.
One may ‘sense’ the interval to his mind, after a fashion,
by dividing it up in this way: After De Soto glimpsed the river,
a fraction short of a quarter of a century elapsed, and then
Shakespeare was born; lived a trifle more than half a century,
then died; and when he had been in his grave considerably more
than half a century, the SECOND white man saw the Mississippi.
In our day we don’t allow a hundred and thirty years to elapse
between glimpses of a marvel. If somebody should discover
a creek in the county next to the one that the North Pole is in,
Europe and America would start fifteen costly expeditions thither:
one to explore the creek, and the other fourteen to hunt