eturn. But Father
Hennepin constrained them to press onward. As they descended the
Illinois, they found the river deep and broad, much resembling the
Seine at Paris. It would, at times, expand to nearly a mile in breadth.
Large trees crowned many of the gentle eminences which lined the
stream. Upon ascending the hills, as they landed for their night's
encampment, they gazed, with delight in the gorgeous sunset, upon the
magnificent prairies spread out before them as far as the eye could
reach.

There is nothing which earth has ever presented more beautiful than
those Eden-like landscape resembling the ocean in expanse, which were
thus for the first time, unveiled to the view of civilized men. Here
and there groups of trees appeared, in small groves, as if planted by
the exquisite taste of a landscape gardener. Herds of buffaloes,
antelopes, and deer, grazed the herbage in countless numbers. Birds of
every variety of song and plumage found here their paradise. And in
these fair realms the children of Adam might have experienced joys
hardly surpassed by those of their first parents in Eden, were it not
for that inhumanity of man to man which has caused countless millions
to mourn. To redeem this world from the curse of sin, Jesus the Son of
God has suffered and died. And there can be no possible true happiness
for the human family until the result of his mission shall be
accomplished.

Our voyagers, on the seventh day of their journey, having passed down
the windings of the river, about two hundred miles, as they judged,
came to a pleasant Indian village of about two hundred wigwams. These
Indians had an eye for beauty. Their little cluster of homes was
picturesquely situated upon a green plain, gently ascending from the
banks of the river, which commanded a view of the water for some
distance above and below. The prairie, in its grandeur, spread far and
wide around. The village was about six miles above the entrance of the
Illinois into the Mississippi River. The tribe was called the Maraos.
The hospitable savages, who without any difficulty could have killed
the Frenchmen and have taken possession of all their goods, treated the
strangers as brothers, and urged them to visit their houses. In these
hospitable rites we see beautiful vestiges of the character of man
before the fall. But alas! we can never meet the children of Adam
anywhere, or under any circumstances, without soon seeing the evidence
of that fall when s