g through banks from the west, yellow with
mud, noisy as a storm, eddying islands of branches, stumps, whole trees,
took possession of the fair stream they had followed so long. It shot
across the current of the Mississippi in entering so that the canoes
danced like eggshells and were dangerously forced to the eastern bank.
Afterwards they learned that this was the Pekitanoui, or, as we now call
it, the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi not far above
the present city of St. Louis; and that by following it to its head
waters and making a short portage across a prairie, a man might in time
enter the Red or Vermilion Sea of California.

Having slipped out of the Missouri's reach, the explorers were next
threatened by a whirlpool among rocks before they reached the mouth of
Ouaboukigou, the Ohio River. They saw purple, red, and violet earths,
which ran down in streams of color when wet, and a sand which stained
their paddles like blood. Tall canes began to feather the shore, and
mosquitoes tormented them as they pressed on through languors of heat.
Jolliet and Marquette made awnings of sails which they had brought as a
help to the paddles. They were floating down the current of the muddy,
swollen river when they saw Indians with guns on the east shore. The
voyageurs dropped their paddles and seized their own weapons. Marquette
stood up and spoke to the Indians in Huron. They made no answer. He held
up the white calumet. Then they began to beckon, and when the party drew
to land, they made it clear that they had themselves been frightened
until they saw the Blackrobe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe,
somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling themselves Tuscaroras;
they were rovers, and had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double glass
bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with white people
eastward.

They fed the French with buffalo meat and white plums, and declared it
was but a ten days' journey to the sea. In this they were mistaken, for
it was more than a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico.

[Illustration: Wampum Girdle.]

To each tribe as he passed, Marquette preached his faith by the belt of
the prayer. For each he had a wampum girdle to hold while he talked, and
to leave for a remembrance. His words without a witness would be
forgotten.

Three hundred miles farther the explorers ventured, and had nearly
reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, floating on a wide expanse o