Remarks of Gov. James E.
Campbell. 161
REMARKS OF GOVERNOR JAMES E. CAMPBELL.
It was a long-deferred pleasure one year
ago, on the 19th of
October, to make my first visit here. I
learned after arriving
that it was an auspicious day, being the
ninety-ninth anniversary
of the landing upon the banks of yonder
river of the little band
of French settlers who founded this
handsome and flourishing
city. During an address to the people,
who gathered on that
occasion to hear the political
discussion of the then existing
campaign, I said, in a half-jocular way,
that I would return in a
year as Governor of the State to
celebrate the city's centennial.
In response to that promise, and your
subsequent courteous in-
vitation, my military staff and myself
have come to participate
in these interesting ceremonies. We are
here rather to be seen
than heard.
The programme announces that I am to
deliver an address,
but the unexpected and overwhelming
labors of the last fort-
night have absorbed my time to the
exclusion of anything but
official work, and I am, therefore,
obliged to confess that I have
no address-that the little I am to say
must be without prepara-
tion. I am simply a gleaner in the field
that has been harvested
so well by those who have preceded me.
The French settlers who came here a
century ago were, as
we all know, not the first French
settlers in the Ohio valley, for
the lilies of France had floated to the
breeze, both on the Ohio
and the Mississippi, a hundred years
before. They were found
north of the great lakes, and around the
southern bayous.
Parkham has happily described it by
saying that "French Amer-
ica had two heads; one among the snows f
Canada, the other
among the cane-brakes of
Louisiana!" Northern Ohio was
occupied by French fur traders as early
as 1680. They were
scattered along the lake from the Maumee
to the Cuyahoga.
Forty years before the settlement of
Gallipolis the English
settlers were warned out of Ohio by the
French commander,
and formal possession taken in the name
of Louis Fifteenth by
burying leaden plates along the Ohio
river, engraved with ap-
propriate inscriptions. The bloody and
picturesque drama of
Vol. III-11