Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/255

 fertile district, are said to have tortured their captives and devoured their flesh with a savage cruelty quite equal to any thing ever witnessed elsewhere by European travelers; and it was with a feeling of intense relief that the white men turned aside, after entering the marshy districts bordering on Lake Michigan, to visit the mission station founded long ago by their fellow-countryman, Carey, the great Apostle of the Indians, who did for the neglected redskins of the present century what the good old Jesuit priests had done for their ancestors.

At this little oasis in the wilderness, fifty acres had already been cleared and six log-huts built, in one of which some fifty or sixty Indian children were being educated, their parents and chiefs encouraging their teachers in every possible way, though not themselves converts either to the civilization or to the religion of the white men. From the mission station the expedition proceeded through forests and across a rich fertile country of oak-openings and prairies, succeeded by swampy plains, till they found themselves on the southern shores of Lake Michigan, which presented the appearance of a vast ocean stretching away in an unbroken expanse as far as the eye could reach.

Huge broken bowlders of granite, piles of sand and pebbles, rolling waves and white-crested breakers, added to the impression first received, and it was difficult to believe that this troubled sea was but one of that long series of fresh water lakes from which issues the mightiest artery of North America, the St. Lawrence of many memories.

Reluctantly turning his back on the grand scene just described, Long now led his party in a south-westerly direction toward the Mississippi, passing near the site of the present Chicago, and crossing the fertile prairies of Illinois, where not a tree breaks the solemn monotony of the wilderness. As the Father of Waters was approached, however, the whole character of the country changed; hill and vale, forest and clearing, alternating with wildly picturesque rocks and mountains, between which the majestic volume of the river rolls in irresistible majesty.

Embarking on the broad basin of the now well-known river, the travelers commenced their actual explorations by struggling upward till they came to its junction with the Minnesota, or St. Peter's River, its largest tributary north of the Missouri, and which joins it near the Falls of St. Anthony. The Minnesota had never yet been followed to its source; and, entering it, Long slowly ascended it to its head-waters, now in a south-westerly, now in