estimates of distance are here much too low. They seem to be founded on
observations of latitude, without reckoning the windings of the river. It
may interest sportsmen to know that the party killed several large
alligators on their way. Membre is much astonished that such monsters
should be born of eggs, like chickens.] Here, as their two guides told
them, was the path to the great town of the Taensas. Tonty and Membre were
sent to visit it. They and their men shouldered their birch canoe through
the swamp, and launched it on a lake which had once formed a portion of
the channel of the river. In two hours they reached the town, and Tonty
gazed at it with astonishment. He had seen nothing like it in America;
large square dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, arched
over with a dome-shaped roof of canes, and placed in regular order around
an open area. Two of them were larger and better than the rest. One was
the lodge of the chief; the other was the temple, or house of the Sun.
They entered the former, and found a single room, forty feet square,
where, in the dim light, for there was no opening but the door, the chief
sat awaiting them on a sort of bedstead, three of his wives at his side,
while sixty old men, wrapped in white cloaks woven of mulberrybark, formed
his divan. When he spoke, his wives howled to do him honor; and the
assembled councillors listened with the reverence due to a potentate for
whom, at his death, a hundred victims were to be sacrificed. He received
the visitors graciously, and joyfully accepted the gifts which Tonty laid
before him. [Footnote: Tonty, _Memoire_, MS. In the spurious narrative
published in Tonty's name, the account is embellished and exaggerated.
Compare Membre, in Le Clercq, ii. 227. La Salle's statements in the
Relation of 1682 (Thomassy, 12) sustain those of Tonty.] This interview
over, the Frenchmen repaired to the temple, wherein were kept the bones of
the departed chiefs. In construction it was much like the royal dwelling.
Over it were rude wooden figures, representing three eagles turned towards
the east. A strong mud wall surrounded it, planted with stakes, on which