souri
pours its contribution, gathered from thousands of miles of mountain and
prairie, into the parent stream, rushing with the force and roar of a
rapid through a channel half a mile broad, and quickly converting the
clear Mississippi waters into a turbid yellow torrent, thick with mud.

La Salle, like so many of the early explorers, was full of the idea of
finding a short route across the continent to the Pacific Ocean, and he
found the Indians at the mouth of the Missouri ready to tell him
anything he wanted to know. They said that by sailing ten or twelve days
up the stream, through populous villages of their people, he would come
to a range of mountains in which the river rose; and by climbing to the
summit of these lofty hills he could gaze upon a vast and boundless sea,
whose waves broke on their farther side. It was one of those imaginative
stories which the Indians were always ready to tell, and the whites as
ready to believe, and it was well for La Salle that he did not attempt
the fanciful adventure.

Savage settlements were numerous along the Mississippi, as De Soto had
found a century and more earlier. About thirty miles below the Missouri
they came to another village of peaceful natives, whose souls they made
happy by a few trifling gifts which were of priceless worth to their
untutored minds. Then downward still they went for a hundred miles or
more farther, to the mouth of another great stream, this one flowing
from the east, and as noble in its milder way as the Missouri had been
in its turbulent flow. Unlike the latter, this stream was gentle in its
current, and its waters were of crystal clearness. It was the splendid
river which the Indians called the Wabash, or Beautiful River, and the
French by the similar name of La Belle Riviere. It is now known as the
Ohio, the Indian name being transferred to one of its tributaries. This
was the stream on whose waters La Salle had gazed with admiration
thirteen years before.

The voyagers were obliged to proceed slowly. Unable to carry many
provisions in their crowded canoes, they were often forced to stop and
fish or hunt for game. As the Indians told them they would find no good
camping-grounds for many miles below the Ohio, they stopped for ten days
at its mouth, hunting and gathering supplies. Parties were sent out to
explore in various directions, and one of the men, Peter Prudhomme,
failed to return. It was feared that he had been taken captive by the