his voyage must have been innumerable.
The crowded canoes, the loathsome personal habits of the savages,
elevated but little above the beasts, the blistering midday sun, the
drenching storms and showers, the cheerless encampments, often upon the
open prairie with no protection whatever from wind and rain, and the
food often scanty, consisting of nothing but flesh, without any
seasoning, boiled in earthen pots, or broiled upon the coals, must
have rendered the excursion irksome in the extreme to civilized men
accustomed to the comforts of European life.

In our last chapter we left the Indians, several hundred in number, in
a fleet of canoes descending the upper waters of the Mississippi, in
search of game. The three Frenchmen were with them. They were somewhere
near the mouth of the Wisconsin River. Conscious that they were
trespassing upon hunting grounds which other tribes claimed, they
practised the utmost caution to elude their enemies. There were two
hundred and fifty warriors, thoroughly armed with all the weapons of
savage warfare, who composed the guard of the tribe.

Whenever they landed, they selected a spot where they could hide their
canoes in the tangled brush which often fringed the banks of the river.
Some warriors were sent to the tops of the adjacent eminences to see if
there were any indications of hostile parties in the vicinity. They
then pushed back twenty or thirty miles into the prairie land, where
they almost invariably found herds of buffaloes grazing. Without horses
to aid in the pursuit, and with only arrows and javelins as weapons,
the killing of a buffalo was indeed an arduous task. Still, in the
course of a few weeks, a hundred and twenty were slaughtered. They
jerked the meat; that is, they cut it into very thin strips and hung
them in the sun over a smouldering fire, so that it was both smoked and
dried at the same time.

One day an Indian ran a splinter far into his foot, inflicting a very
serious wound. Father Hennepin made a deep incision in the sole, to
draw out the wood. He was performing the painful operation when an
alarm was given, that foes were approaching the camp. The wounded
Indian immediately sprang upon his feet, seized his arms and rushed to
meet the enemy, regardless of his swollen, throbbing foot. The alarm
proved a false one. A herd of eighty stags in the distance had been
imagined to be hostile warriors. The excitement being over, it was with
very great difficulty t