NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION. 205 



important; for it was at this spot, after having spent years of 

 devotion in the cause of missions in New France — in the course 

 of which he discovered the Mississippi River — that this zealous 

 servant of God laid down in his tent, after a hard day's travel, 

 and surrendered up his life. The event occurred on the 8th of 

 !May, 1675, but two years after his grand discovery. Marquette 

 was a native of Laon, in Picardy, where his family was of dis- 

 tinguished rank. The precise moment of his death was not wit- 

 nessed, his men having retired to leave him to his devotions, but 

 returning, in a short time, found him lifeless. They carried his 

 body to the mission of old Michilimackinac, of which he was the 

 founder, where it was interred.* 



It rained the next morning (6th), by which we lost two hours, 

 and we had some unfavorable winds, but, by dint of hard pushing, 

 we made forty-five miles, and slept at Gravelly Point. In this line 

 we passed successively, at distances of seventeen and thirty miles, 

 the rivers Manistic and Becsie, which is the Canadian phrase for 

 the anas canadensis. Clouds and murky weather still hovered 

 around us on the next morning, but we left our encampment at 

 an early hour. Thirteen miles brought us to the Omicomico, or 

 Plate River, nine miles be3^ond which found us in front of a re- 

 markable and very elevated sand dune, called the Sleeping Bear — 

 a fanciful term, derived from the Indian, through the French 

 Vours qui dormis. Opposite this feature in the coast geology, lie 

 the two large wooded islands called the Minitos — well-known 

 objects to all mariners who venture into the vast unsheltered 

 basin of the southern body of Lake Michigan. Thirty miles beyond 

 this sandy elevation, brought us to the southern cape of Grand Tra- 

 verse Bay, where we encamped, having advanced fifty-two miles. 

 This was the first place where we had noticed rocks in situ, 

 since passing the little Konamic River, near Chicago. It proved 

 to be limestone, of the same apparent era of the calcareous rock 



* Place of Interment of Marquette. It is known that the mission of Michili- 

 mackinac fell on the downfall of the Jesuits. When the post of Michilimackinac 

 was removed from the peninsula to the island, about 1780, the bones of the mis- 

 sionary were transferred to the old Catholic burial-ground, in the village on the 

 island. There they remained till a land or property question arose to agitate the 

 church, and, when the crisis happened, the whole graveyard was disturbed, and hia 

 bones, with others, were transferred to the Indian village of La Crosse, which is in 

 the vicinity of L'Arbre Croche, Michigan. 



