The Chickasaw Indians, relieved, doubtless, at the prospect of getting rid of the intruders, gladly led them to one of the ordinary crossing-places, but the native canoes found there were not fit for the transportation of horses, and a month was consumed in building barges, during which visits were paid to the strangers by Aquixo, the cacique of the Dakota tribe dwelling on the other side of the Miche Sepe, who would gladly have made friends with his white brother, had not De Soto met his advances by killing the first of his followers who landed near his camp. By this short-sighted policy the Spanish leader once more defeated his own purpose, and when the transit of the Mississippi was at last effected, his march along the western banks was harassed by the constant hostility of the natives. In the course of the summer, however, after a dreary struggle through the morasses above the landing-stage, he came to the dryer and loftier regions of Missouri, where the natives took him and his men for Children of the Sun, and brought out their blind to be restored to sight. Illustration: SCENE ON THE MISSISSIPPI AT THE PRESENT DAY. For once, De Soto refrained to inflict any injury on the simple believers in his divine mission. Perhaps some dim vision of what he might have been to the untutored savages, had he been true to his own creed, flitted across his mind. In any case, we find the stern, unrelenting, bloodthirsty man assuming for a moment the character of a preacher of the Gospel, pointing to a cross he had set up on an Indian mound, and telling the Indians to pray only to God in Heaven for what they needed. Nay more, he condescended to try to explain to them the mystery of the Atonement, and was so far successful, that chief and subjects kneeled with him and his men at the foot of the sign of our redemption, and listened without interruption to the prayers put up to the God of the white men.