the opening
flowers, betokened the reviving life of Nature. For several days more
they followed the writhings of the great river, on its tortuous course
through wastes of swamp and canebrake, till on the thirteenth of March
they found themselves wrapt in a thick fog. Neither shore was visible;
but they heard on the right the booming of an Indian drum and the
shrill outcries of the war-dance. La Salle at once crossed to the
opposite side, where, in less than an hour, his men threw up a rude
fort of felled trees. Meanwhile, the fog cleared; and, from the
farther bank, the astonished Indians saw the strange visitors at their
work. Some of the French advanced to the edge of the water, and
beckoned them to come over. Several of them approached, in a wooden
canoe, to within the distance of a gun-shot. La Salle displayed the
calumet, and sent a Frenchman to meet them. He was well received; and,
the friendly mood of the Indians being now apparent, the whole party
crossed the river.

On landing, they found themselves at a town of the Kappa band of the
Arkansas, a people dwelling near the mouth of the river which bears
their name. "The whole village," writes Membre to his superior, "came
down to the shore to meet us, except the women, who had run off. I
cannot tell you the civility and kindness we received from these
barbarians, who brought us poles to make huts, supplied us with
firewood during the three days we were among them, and took turns in
feasting us. We did not lose the value of a pin while we were among
them." ...

After touching at several other towns of this people, the voyagers
resumed their course, guided by two of the Arkansas; passed the sites,
since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf; and, about three
hundred miles below the Arkansas, stopt by the edge of a swamp on the
western side of the river. Here, as their two guides told them, was
the path to the great town of the Taensas. Tonty and Membre were sent
to visit it. They and their men shouldered their birch canoe through
the swamp, and launched it on a lake which had once formed a portion
of the channel of the river.

In two hours they reached the town; and Tonty gazed at it with
astonishment. He had seen nothing like it in America: large square
dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, arched over with a
dome-shaped roof of canes, and placed in regular order around an open
area. Two of them were larger and better than the rest. One was