was in 1885. All books to be used throughout the schools were henceforth to be supplied to the pupils by the city. The advantage of this arrangement are inestimable.

Mr. James in 1885 made a change in grading. He divided the year's work into two parts instead of three, the highest class being since known as the B class.

In 1888 a course of book keeping was added to the high school electives and has become very popular. Since then no changes have taken place.

1890 finds Omaha with over twelve thousand pupils attending her schools and fifty-one school buildings in the care of two hundred and seventy teachers.

THE CHRISTENING OF THE PLATTE.

BY JAMES W. SAVAGE.

[Read before a meeting of the Society, January 14, 1890.]

In the sixth volume of his collections of manuscript documents relating to America by M. Pierre Margey, the distinguished historical investigator of France, is given a brief synopsis of an account of a visit in the year 1739 to the territory now included in the state of Nebraska, which seems worthy of translation or paraphrase, and of a place in the records of the Historical Society of our state. It is entitled, "The Journey of the Mallet Brothers with Six Other Frenchmen from the River of the Panimahas in the Missouri Country to Santa Fe." To comprehend the full significance of the expedition it will be useful to recall to our minds the jealousies, the rivalries, the contests and treacheries, the massacres, the assassinations, the crimes of all sorts which the sixteenth and seventeenth, centuries witnessed as the result of the discoveries by Columbus.

Spain, reasonably secure in her possessions of the country west of the deserts beyond the Mississippi which the valor and prowess of Cortez had given her, laid claim also by virtue of the revelations of the Genoese navigator to the whole of Florida, under which attractive name was comprehended the entire region from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the gulf to the north pole. France, grudging the glory and the wealth with which the new world had adorned the crown of Charles the Fifth, entrusted to Verrazzano the task of finding the opulent kingdom of Cathay, and as a result of his discoveries laid claim to the same extensive country. The hostility thus begun lasted for more than two centuries.

The French complained with indignation that the Spaniards thought that the new world was created expressly for them, and that no other man living had a right to move or breathe therein. The bitterness engendered by these rival interests led to the atrocities of Menendez and Gourgues, the butcheries of Fort Caroline and St.

Augustine, at the narrative of which the blood still runs cold. That the slaughter was committed in the name of the founder of the religion of peace adds darker shadows to the sombre story of those days. One mild and gentle apostle addressed the king in these words: "It is lawful that your majesty, like a good shepherd appointed by the hand of the Eternal Father should tend and lead out your sheep, since the Holy Spirit has shown spreading pastures whereon are feeding lost sheep which have been snatched away by the dragoon, the demon. These pastures are the new world, wherein is comprised Florida, now in possession of the demon, and he makes himself adored and revealed. This is the land of promise possessed by idolaters, the Amorite, Amelekite, Moabite, Canaanite. This is the land promised by the Eternal Father to the faithful, since we are commanded by God in the holy scriptures to take it from them, being idolaters, and by reason of their idolatry and sin to put them to the knife, leaving no living thing except maidens and children, their cities robbed and sacked, their walls and houses levelled to the earth."

For many long years the struggle between France and Spain for this fairest portion of the new world continued. Neither was destined to succeed. The pompous expeditions of both nations, their blasphemous proclamations, their costly settlements-all gave way in time to the simple beginnings on the banks of the James and the coast of New England. Still, for a long time after the Spaniards were confined to Mexico, and the French to Canada and the Mississippi valley, the same suspicions, jealousies, rivalries and antagonisms continued. If the French made a move in one quarter, the Spaniards endeavored to meet it by a counter stroke in another. If one nation established a trading post in the wilderness, the other sought to seduce its servants and to render the enterprise abortive. Spies and other emissaries abounded everywhere. With an ostentatious display of peace on both sides, there was constant suspicion and constant watchfulness. In a letter from Bienville, governor of Louisiana, dated April 25, 1722, he says that he learns from the savages of the Missouri that the Spaniards meditated an establishment on the Kansas river, and that he has ordered Sieur de Boisbriant to prevent this by sending a detachment of twenty soldiers to build a little fort and to remain in garrison on that river.

Such was the situation in the years 1739-40, when the expedition to which I invite a few minutes' attention started from what is now Nebraska to Santa Fe. What we know of this journey is meagre and fragmentary in a most provoking degree, consisting solely of an abridgement or synopsis of a journal kept by one of the travellers for the perusal of Governor de Bienville at New Orleans. The summary or table of its contents is as follows: "The brothers Mallet with six other Frenchmen, leaving the river of the Panimahas discover the river Platte, visit the villages of the Lalitane nation, and reach Santa Fe." The names of those who composed this adventurous band were Peter and Paul Mallet, Philip Robitaille, Louis Morin, or, as the name is sometimes written, Moreau, Michael Beslot, Joseph Bellecourt, Manuel Gallien, and Jean David. All except the last, who was from the mother country, were Canadians of French parentage. The ostensible object of their trip was to establish trade with the merchants of New Mexico. What secret instructions if any, they had, or what their real purpose was, is nowhere involved in their memorial, and will probably never be more than conjectured, but that the Spaniards were at least doubtful as to their character seems clear. About one hundred years later, and long after Louisiana had become the property of the United States, an expedition starting from Texas with the same pretense of amity and social intercourse, received but scant courtesy from the Mexicans, and it is not probable that the latter were less on their guard against their hereditary enemies, the French.

The little band, at the time when the journal was introduced to them, had reached the nation of the Panimahas, with whom the French were on friendly terms, living on a river of the same name. It may be considered as a fact established by papers already published in the collection of this society, that the Panimahas where the tribe since known as the Pawnees, and the Panimaha river was the stream now called the Loup Fork.

From a point on the Loup, not far from where Genoa is now situated, the Mallet brothers took their departure on the 29th day of May, 1739. Those who, prior to that time had essayed to make the same hazardous journey, had supposed that New Mexico was situated on the headwaters of the Missouri, and had therefore attempted to reach that country by following up the course of the last-mentioned

stream.

But the Mallet brothers, upon the advice of some of their savage allies, determined to seek New Mexico by taking a southwesterly direction across the country. Accordingly, pursuing this course, they came on the third day to a wide and shallow river which (and here I follow the exact language of the original) they named the Platte. So far as I know or can ascertain this was the first time that our wandering stream had received an appellation in a Christian tongue. Other adventurous bushrangers thereafter translated other titles and L'Eau-qui-court, L'Eau-qui-pleure, the Papillion, the Chadron, the Loup, and others will long retain, it is to be hoped, the soft and musical nomenclature of the Gallic race. But who named them or when, are as yet as difficult to answer as the question what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women. This one fact has alone survived the century and a half that has elapsed since the daring enterprise of these Canadian French.

They struck the Platte probably in the vicinity of Kearney. any rate, at some point where the general course of the stream was toward the northeast or east, for we read that the explorers, finding that it did not deviate materially from the route they had chosen, followed it up for the distance of twenty-eight leagues, where they found that the river of the Padoucas emptied into it. This river was unquestionably the south fork of the Platte, and it is noteworthy that on one of Colton's maps of the United States, published in 1862, the stream is still called the Padouca. For three days afterwards the brothers Mallet ascended the north fork of the Platte, until on the 13th of June finding that its course was leading them to the northwest instead of the direction they had determined upon, they turned to the left, crossed the north fork, traversed the tongue of land made by the two branches, and encamped on the shores of a river which must have been the south fork.

It is not easy to identify with absolute certainty the water course which in the next few days they seem to have crossed. From their journal has been eliminated all matters except such as would enable an engineer officer to direct the march of an army over the same course. It is manifest, however, that they crossed several affluents and the main current of the Republican, marching over a treeless country, which supplies barely wood enough for cooking purposes, and recording that these bare plains extended as far as the mountains