THE FORMER RANGE OF THE BUFFALO, 85 
cabins made of rushes. Father Marquette was enraptured in be- 
holding the position of their town, ‘the view was beautiful and 
very picturesque, for from the eminence on which it was perched, 
the eye discovered on every side prairies spreading away beyond 
its reach, interspersed with thickets or groves of lofty trees.” 
After having assembled the Indians and addressing them upon the 
objects of their voyage, and after haying received a present from 
the Indians, a mat which served them as a bed, they set out upon 
their voyage. They embarked in the “sight of a great crowd, who ' 
could not wonder enough to see seven Frenchmen alone in two 
canoes dare to undertake so strange and hazardous an expedition.” 
With the assistance of two Miami Indians, given them as guides, 
they found their way through the marshes to the “ portage” where 
canoes and- cargoes were carried and safely deposited in the Wis- 
consin. Here they bid good-by to the waters that flowed through 
the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence by Quebec, and turned to 
follow those that were to lead them into strange lands. They bid 
their Indian guides good-by, and the voyageurs “ were alone in an 
unknown country in the hands of Providence.” They floated si- 
lently down the Wisconsin. ‘It was an unbroken solitude, where 
the ripple of their paddles sounded loudly on the ear, and their 
voices, subdued by the stillness, were sent back in lonely echoes 
the shore.” * 
They “saw no small game or fish, but deer and elk in consider- 
able numbers.” Bancroft renders the word vaches, buffalo, but this 
is a mistake. They had not yet reached the buffalo ground. The 
words vache sauvage, as used by the Canadian French, applied to 
the American elk, Cervus Canadensis.+ 
At length, on the 17th day of June, with a joy that Marquette 
could find no words to express, they glided into the Great River, 
the storied theme of many an Indian tale. They gently followed 
its course to the forty-second degree of latitude. Here all was 
changed. Their birch-bark canoes were now floating between the 
great prairies of Iowa and Illinois, while the river was studded 
with beautiful islands fringed with willows whose branches were 
reflected back from the bosom of the water. Everything was 
Strange and calculated to strike the imagination of the voyageurs. 
' At one time a great fish struck one of the canoes so violently that 
*McConnel; Western Character. 
t Discovery and Ex. of the Miss., >. ye Shea, p. 16. 
