Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/147

 Good Spirit. He was invited to remain; and accepting the hospitality tendered to him, he founded the mission of St. Esprit, to which, in an incredibly short space of time, flocked Hurons and Ottawas, with members of distant western tribes whose very names had never before been heard of; the Potawatomies, or worshipers of the sun, the Illinois, the Sacs, the Foxes, and many another race, sinking their differences for a time in their common eagerness to share the good tidings of great joy which the white man was said to have brought.

Now, for the first time, were heard whispers of the existence, not very far away from St. Esprit, of the great Father of Waters, the Mesipi, which flowed on and on forever to the south between vast prairies, where roamed the buffalo and the deer, where forests were almost unknown, and the wind swept unchecked over the tall whispering grasses.

Convinced that, from all he heard, the people on the Mesipi were ripe for the reception of the Gospel, and little dreaming of the identity of this great river with that of which the mouth had been discovered by De Soto so many years before, Allouez paid a visit to Quebec in 1668 to win recruits to go forth into the prairies. As usual, there were plenty of volunteers. Three short days after his arrival at the capital he was on his way back to Chagwamegan, accompanied by Louis Nicholas, and followed by Claude Dablon and James Marquette, who, as a preliminary step for the work before them, founded the mission of St. Mary's on the Falls, between Lakes Superior and Huron, close to the spot where the Chippewayans had had their first interview with a white man a few years previously.

From St. Mary's, which shortly became a rendezvous for young men anxious to help in the great movement, small parties went forth among the tribes dwelling on Lake Michigan, founding new missions on the site of the present Chicago, Milwaukee, etc.; and in 1669, Marquette, who to the zeal of a missionary added that of a geographical explorer, conceived the idea of navigating the great river. The Potawatomies assured him that the natives who dwelt on the Father of Waters would assuredly slay him, or, if he escaped their hands, he would be swallowed up by the monsters which haunted the deep places in the river. The French authorities were loth to consent to what seemed likely to end in a mere useless loss of life; but Marquette was resolute. He turned the long delay, before he could get permission to start, to account by learning something of the Illinois language, and in founding a kind of city of refuge for the scattered Hurons on