The voyagers' next sensation was experienced after passing the mouth of the Illinois River. Immediately above the site of the city of Alton, the flat face of a high rock was painted, in the highest style of Indian art, with representations of two horrible monsters, to which the natives were wont to make sacrifices as they passed on the river. The sight of them caused in the pious Frenchmen a feeling that they were in the Devil's country, for to Christians of the seventeenth century heathen {180} gods were not mere creatures of the imagination, but living beings, demons, high captains in Satan's great army. Soon the voyagers were made to fear for their safety by a mighty torrent of yellow mud surging athwart the blue current of the Mississippi, sweeping down logs and uprooting trees, and dashing their light canoes like leaves on an angry brook. They were passing the mouth of the Missouri. A few days later they crossed the outlet of the Ohio, "Beautiful River," as the Iroquois name means. All the time it was growing hotter. The picturesque shores of the upper river had given place to dense canebrakes, and swarms of mosquitoes pestered them day and night. Now they had a note of danger in meeting some Indians who evidently were in communication with Europeans, for they had guns and carried their powder in small bottles of thick glass. These Europeans could be none other than the Spaniards to the southward, of whom it behooved the Frenchmen to beware, if they did not wish to pull an oar in a galley or swing a pick in a silver-mine. Still there was a satisfaction in the thought that, having left one civilization thousands of miles behind them, {181} they had passed through the wilderness to the edge of another. These Indians readily responded to the appeal of the Frenchmen's calumet, invited them ashore, and feasted them. On toward the ocean, which they were falsely told was distant only ten days' journey, the voyagers sped, passing the point at which, one hundred and thirty-three years earlier, Soto, with the remnant of his army, had crossed the mighty river in whose bed his bones were destined to rest. Above the mouth of the Arkansas they were for a time in deadly peril from Indians. These were of the Mitchigamea tribe, who, with the Chickasaws and others of the Muskoki family, fought the Spaniards so valiantly. Canoes were putting out above and below, to cut off the explorers' retreat, while some young warriors on the shore were hastily stringing their bows, all animated doubtless by bitter memories of white men inherited from Soto's time. Once more the calumet saved its bearers. Marquette all the while held it aloft, and some of the elders, responding to its silent appeal, succeeded in restraining the fiery young men. The strangers were invited ashore, feasted, as usual, and entertained over night. They had some misgivings, but did not {182} dare refuse these hospitalities; and no harm befell them.