More than one hundred and thirty years passed over these solitudes, when James Marquette, a French missionary among the Indians at Saint Marys, the outlet of Lake Superior, resolved to explore the Mississippi, of whose magnificence he had heard much from the lips of the Indians, who had occasionally extended their hunting tours to its banks. He was inured to all the hardships of the wilderness, seemed to despise worldly comforts, and had a soul of bravery which could apparently set all perils at defiance. And still he was indued with a poetic nature, which reveled in the charms of these wild and romantic realms, as he climbed its mountains and floated in his canoe over its silent and placid streams. Even then it was not known whether the Mississippi emptied its majestic flood into the Pacific Ocean or into the Gulf of Mexico. The foot of the white man upon the shores of Lake Superior, had never penetrated beyond the Indian village, where the Fox River enters into Green Bay. From this point Marquette started for the exploration of the Mississippi. The party consisted of Mr. Marquette, a French gentleman by the name of Joliete, five French voyageurs and two Indian guides. They transported their two birch canoes on their shoulders across the portage from the Fox River to the Wisconsin river. Paddling rapidly down this stream through realms of silence and solitude, they soon entered the majestic Mississippi, more than fifteen hundred miles above its mouth. Marquette seems to have experienced in the highest degree the romance of his wonderful voyage, for he says that he commenced the descent of the mighty river with "a joy that could not be expressed." It was the beautiful month of June, 1673, the most genial season of the year. The skies were bright above them. The placid stream was fringed with banks of wonderful luxuriance and beauty, the rocky cliffs at times assuming the aspect of majestic castles of every variety of architecture; again the gently swelling hills were robed in sublime forests, and again the smooth meadows, in their verdure, spread far away to the horizon. Rapidly the canoes, gently guided by the paddles, floated down the stream. Having descended the river about one hundred and eighty miles, they came to a very well trod Indian trail leading back from the river into the interior. Marquette and Joliete had the curiosity and the courage to follow this trail for six miles, until they came to an Indian village. It would seem that some of the Indians there, in their hunting excursions, had wandered to some of the French settlements; for four of their leading men, dressed in the most gorgeous display of barbaric pomp, "brilliant with many colored plumes," came out to meet them and conducted them to the cabin of their chief. He addressed them in the following words: "How beautiful is the sun, Frenchman, when thou comest to visit us. Our whole village welcomes thee. In peace thou shalt enter all our dwellings."