eliance was upon corn. They sowed it at all seasons,
raising three crops a year. While some fields were just sprouting,
others were in the soft and milky state suitable for roasting, and
other fields were waving with the ripe and golden harvest. These
southern tribes were generally much more advanced in the arts than
those farther north. They manufactured many quite admirable articles of
pottery for household use. It is said that some of them were hardly
inferior in form and finish to the exquisite vases found in Herculaneum
and Pompeii.

Still they were in many respects degraded savages, of loathsome habits,
but little elevated above the brutes. Many of the men wandered about
without any clothing. The women were not regarded with any honor. They
were beasts of burden, dressed in wretched skins, without any
ornaments. Their wigwams were long and wide, made of bark, with a
single central entrance. Almost like the cattle, they slept together at
the two extremities, upon mat-covered elevations, raised about two feet
from the ground. From the description of Father Marquette, we should
infer that, in this melancholy village, the chiefs alone enjoyed the
luxury of sleeping upon poles enveloped with suffocating smoke to drive
away the mosquitoes.

"We ate no fruit there," writes Marquette, "but watermelons. If they
knew how to cultivate their grounds they might have plenty of all
kinds."

In the evening M. Joliet and Father Marquette held a conference in
reference to their future course. They had ascertained that they were
at 33 deg. 40' north latitude. The basin of the Gulf of Mexico was at 31 deg.
40'. Though the Indians had said that they could reach the sea in ten
days, it was manifest that they could easily accomplish the distance in
four or five. The question was consequently settled that the
Mississippi ran into the Gulf of Mexico. To decide this point was the
great object of their voyage. Spanish outrages had exasperated all the
Indians along the southern coast. The voyagers could not prosecute
their enterprise any farther, but at the imminent peril of their lives.
Should they thus perish, the result of their discoveries would, for a
long time, be lost to the world.

They feared the Spaniards even more than they did the savages. The
Spaniards, jealous of the power of France, would certainly hold them as
prisoners, if they could take them, and would not improbably put them
to death to prevent the fact of their havi