number of dressed deer-skins, red girdles, and bows and arrows, which they
had hung upon it as an offering to the Great Manitou of the French,--a
sight by which, as Marquette says, he was "extremely consoled."

The travellers had no sooner reached the town than they called the chiefs
and elders to a council. Joliet told them that the Governor of Canada had
sent him to discover new countries, and that God had sent his companion to
teach the true faith to the inhabitants; and he prayed for guides to show
them the way to the waters of the Wisconsin. The council readily
consented; and on the tenth of June the Frenchmen embarked again, with two
Indians to conduct them. All the town came down to the shore to see their
departure. Here were the Miamis, with long locks of hair dangling over
each ear, after a fashion which Marquette thought very becoming; and here,
too, the Mascoutins and the Kickapoos, whom he describes as mere boors in
comparison with their Miami townsmen. All stared alike at the seven
adventurers, marvelling that men could be found to risk an enterprise so
hazardous.

The river twisted among lakes and marshes choked with wild rice; and, but
for their guides, they could scarcely have followed the perplexed and
narrow channel. It brought them at last to the portage; where, after
carrying their canoes a mile and a half over the prairie and through the
marsh, they launched them on the Wisconsin, bade farewell to the waters
that flowed to the St. Lawrence, and committed themselves to the current
that was to bear them they knew not whither,--perhaps to the Gulf of
Mexico, perhaps to the South Sea or the Gulf of California. They glided
calmly down the tranquil stream, by islands choked with trees and matted
with entangling grape-vines; by forests, groves, and prairies,--the parks
and pleasure-grounds of a prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and
broad bare sand-bars; under the shadowing trees, between whose tops looked