canoes, and bade them, after their stolid fashion, a friendly farewell.

Again they were on their way, slowly drifting down the great river. They
passed the mouth of the Illinois, and glided beneath that line of rocks on
the eastern side, cut into fantastic forms by the elements, and marked as
"The Ruined Castles" on some of the early French maps. Presently they
beheld a sight which reminded them that the Devil was still lord paramount
of this wilderness. On the flat face of a high rock, were painted in red,
black, and green a pair of monsters,--each "as large as a calf, with horns
like a deer, red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression of
countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body covered
with scales; and the tail so long that it passes entirely round the body,
over the head and between the legs, ending like that of a fish." Such is
the account which the worthy Jesuit gives of these _manitous_, or Indian
gods. [Footnote: The rock where these figures were painted is immediately
above the city of Alton. The tradition of their existence remains, though
they are entirely effaced by time. In 1867, when I passed the place, a
part of the rock had been quarried away, and, instead of Marquette's
monsters, it bore a huge advertisement of "Plantation Bitters." Some years
ago, certain persons, with more zeal than knowledge, proposed to restore
the figures, after conceptions of their own; but the idea was abandoned.

Marquette made a drawing of the two monsters, but it is lost. I have,
however, a fac-simile of a map made a few years later by order of the
Intendant Duchesneau; which is decorated with the portrait of one of them,
answering to Marquette's description, and probably copied from his
drawing. St. Cosme, who saw them in 1699, says that they were even then
almost effaced. Douay and Joutel also speak of them; the former, bitterly
hostile to his Jesuit contemporaries, charging Marquette with exaggeration
in his account of them. Joutel could see nothing terrifying in their