they called
it, Pekitanouei, five or six days' sail, they would come to a very
beautiful prairie, ninety-five miles long. This splendid country, which
was represented as an Eden of loveliness, the Indians said could be
easily crossed, carrying their canoes. They could then take another
river which ran southwest into a small lake. This was the source of
another large and deep river, which emptied into the western sea.

In subsequent years, this description of the Indians was found to be
unexpectedly correct. By ascending the Missouri to the Platte River,
and following that stream to its source among the Rocky Mountains, the
traveller is brought within a few leagues of the Colorado, which flows
into the Gulf of California. Having passed the dangerous rush of the
Missouri, as it entered into the Mississippi, and floating upon the
surface of their combined waters, they came, after the sail, as they
judged, of about sixty miles, to the mouth of another large river, of
gentle current, and whose waters were of crystal purity, flowing in
from the east. The Indians very appropriately called it Wabash, which
signified Beautiful River. The French subsequently called it La Belle
Riviere. We have given it the name of Ohio, appropriating the name
Wabash to one of its most important tributaries.

The voyagers learned that this stream was fringed with a succession of
Indian villages. The various tribes were peaceful, averse to war. In
one district there was a cluster of twenty-three villages; in another,
of eighteen. But alas for man! It would seem that the fallen children
of Adam were determined that there should be no happiness in this
world. The ferocious Iroquois would send their war parties, hundreds of
miles through the wilderness, to make unprovoked attacks upon these
unwarlike people. They would rob them of their harvests, wantonly burn
their wigwams, kill and scalp men, women, and children, and carry off
captives to torture and burn at the stake, in barbarian festivities.

Near the mouth of this river they found deposits of unctuous earth,
having quite brilliantly the colors of red, purple, and violet. Father
Hennepin rubbed some of the red upon his paddle. The constant use of
that paddle in the water, for fifteen days, did not efface the color.
This was a favorite resort of the Indians to obtain materials for
painting their persons.

They now entered the region of that terrible pest, the mosquito.
Elephants, lions, tiger