Their means of subsistence and travel were the simplest imaginable, two canoes and as large quantities of smoked meat and Indian corn as could be conveniently carried. Their canoes were of the usual Canadian pattern, of birch-bark covering, stayed with spruce-root ribs and cedar-splint, with white-pine pitch smeared over the birch-bark joints so as to render them water-tight. Such canoes were of astonishing strength and carrying capacity, and of such lightness that four men could carry the largest across portages. On a bright spring morning, May 17th, Joliet and Marquette, with five other men, left behind them the palisaded post and chapel of St. Ignace. Plying briskly their paddles from sunrise to sunset, they made rapid progress, coasting the lake shore until they turned aside to visit the Menominees, or Wild-rice Indians, whose village was on the river of that same name. Here inquiries for information of the "great river" brought from the savage allies strenuous efforts to dissuade them from visiting this Mississippi, where, they said, the unsparing ferocity of the tribes brought unfailing death by the tomahawk to even inoffensive strangers, and that war now raged among the intervening nations. They further recited the dangers of navigating the rapids of the Great River, the presence of frightful water monsters who swallowed up men and canoes, the roaring demon who engulfed all travellers, and lastly the existence of such excessive heat as to ensure certain death. After religious instruction and service the explorers embarked in their canoes and soon reached the southern extremity of Green Bay, where, says Marquette, "our fathers labor successfully in the conversion of these tribes, having baptized more than 2,000." Joliet from Green Bay entered Fox River, finding it a gentle, beautiful stream, promising easy and pleasant passage and abounding in wildfowl. Soon, however, these agreeable aspects gave way to the sterner phases of exploration, for sharp rapids were fallen in with where the strong and uncertain cross-currents often threatened the total destruction of their frail canoes, which would have proved fatal to their plans, by dashing them against the sharp bowlders. A serious but lesser evil to these enduring voyagers was the injury to their mocassin-shod feet, which were cut and bruised by the sharp edges of the rocky bed of the river over which they slowly and painfully dragged their canoes for long distances. The many rapids were safely passed, and on the 7th of June, 1673, our explorers reached an Indian town which marked the extreme western limits of French discoveries, being the farthest point reached by Nicollet in his adventurous journey.