locks, insomuch, says Joutel, that they looked like a troop of devils--
leaped, stamped, and howled from sunset till dawn. All this was partly to
do the travellers honor, and partly to extort presents. They made
objections, however, when asked to furnish guides; and it was only by dint
of great offers, that four were at length procured. With these, the
travellers resumed their journey in a wooden canoe, about the first of
August, [Footnote: Joutel says that the Parisian boy Barthelemy was left
behind. It was this youth who afterwards uttered the ridiculous defamation
of La Salle mentioned in a preceding note (see _ante_, p. 367). The
account of the death of La Salle, taken from the lips of Couture
(_ibid_.), was received by him from Cavelier and his companions during
their stay at the Arkansas. Couture was by trade a carpenter, and was a
native of Rouen.] descended the Arkansas, and soon reached the dark and
inexorable river, so long the object of their search, rolling like a
destiny through its realms of solitude and shade. They launched forth on
its turbid bosom, plied their oars against the current, and slowly won
their way upward, following the writhings of this watery monster through
cane-brake, swamp, and fen. It was a hard and toilsome journey under the
sweltering sun of August. now on the water, now knee-deep in mud, dragging
their canoe through the unwholesome jungle. On the nineteenth, they passed
the mouth of the Ohio; and their Indian guides made it an offering of
buffalo-meat. On the first of September, they passed the Missouri, and
soon after saw Marquette's pictured rock, and the line of craggy heights
on the east shore, marked on old French maps as "the Ruined Castles."
Then, with a sense of relief, they turned from the great river into the
peaceful current of the Illinois. They were eleven days in ascending it,
in their large and heavy wooden canoe, when, at length, on the afternoon
of the fourteenth of September, they saw, towering above the forest and
the river, the cliff crowned with the palisades of Fort St. Louis of the
Illinois. As they drew near, a troop of Indians, headed by a Frenchman,