s, the emblem of the
crucified Son of God.

"I found," Marquette writes, "that these good people had hung skins and
belts and bows and arrows on the cross, an offering to the Great
Spirit, to thank him because he had taken pity on them during the
winter and had given them an abundant chase."

No white man had ever penetrated beyond this region. These simple,
inoffensive people seemed greatly surprised that seven unarmed men
should venture to press on to meet the unknown dangers of the
wilderness beyond--wilds which their imaginations had peopled with all
conceivable terrors.

On the 10th of June these heroic men resumed their journey. The kind
Indians furnished them with two guides to lead them through the
intricacies of the forest to a river, about ten miles distant, which
they called Wisconsin, and which they said flowed westward into the
Father of Waters. They soon reached this stream. The Indians helped
them to carry their canoes and effects across the portage. "We were
then left," writes Marquette, "alone in that unknown country, in the
hand of God."

Our voyagers found the stream hard to navigate. It was full of
sand-bars and shallows. There were many islands covered with the
richest verdure. At times they came upon landscapes of enchanting
beauty, with lawns and parks and lakes, as if arranged by the most
careful hands of art.

After descending this stream about one hundred and twenty miles, they
reached the mouth of the Wisconsin River, and saw the flood of the
Mississippi rolling majestically before them. It was the 17th of June
1673, Father Marquette writes that, upon beholding the river, he
experienced a joy which he could not express.

Easily they could be swept down by the rapid current into the sublime
unexplored solitudes below. But to paddle back against the
swift-rolling tide would try the muscles of the hardiest men. Still the
voyagers pressed on. It was indeed a fairy scene which now opened
before them. Here bold bluffs hundreds of feet high, jutted into the
river. Here were crags of stupendous size and of every variety of form,
often reminding one of Europe's most picturesque stream, where

"The castled crags of Drachenfels,
Frown o'er the wide and winding Rhine."

Again the prairie would spread out its ocean-like expanse, embellished
with groves, garlanded with flowers of gorgeous colors waving in the
summer breeze, checkered with sunshine and the shade of passing clouds,
with ro