Pike embarked on the Mississippi at Fort Louis, a little below the mouth of the Missouri, on the 9th August, 1805, in a keel-boat about seventy feet long, accompanied by an escort of twenty soldiers, and after successfully navigating the somewhat difficult current, then much impeded by sandbars, he reached the mouth of the Missouri in safety. Above its junction with its chief affluent, the name of which signifies the Mud River, the course of the Father of Waters is comparatively smooth, and no incident of importance occurred till, on the 6th September, the mouth of the Wisconsin was reached, where the arduous portion of the young officer’s work began. Illustration: SIOUX VILLAGE. Having obtained guides at the Indian village of Prairie des Chiens, then an important outpost of the French fur-trade, Pike continued the ascent of the great river till he came to the mouth of the Iowa. Here he was met by a party of Sioux or Dacotah Indians, whose chief gave him a hearty welcome, assuring him that the redskins had tried to keep themselves sober in his honor. In this, says Pike, they had not been very successful, and in their unsteady gait and wild salute of three rounds of ball fired at random, to the great risk of their guests, the young leader noted some of the first symptoms of the fatal effect of the influence of the whites on the once simple and manly natives. At a dinner of a semi-civilized description, the Sioux chief gave Pike the pipe of peace, telling him that it would insure his friendly reception among the “upper bands” of his tribes, and begging him to try and bring about peace between his people and the Minnesota Indians of the East. Thanking his host for the pipe of peace, the power of which had already been proved by his French predecessors on the Mississippi, and promising to do his best with the Minnesotas, Pike pursued his way, between hilly country and prairies dotted with the encampments of the Sioux, till he came to the mouth of the majestic Chippeway on the east, succeeded, a few miles further up, by the yet more beautiful Minnesota, or St. Peters River, on the west.