The explorers took with them a party of five men. Their canoes, we are told, were of birch bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped from spruce roots. Covered with the pitch of yellow pine, and light enough to be carried on the shoulders of four men across portages, these canoes yet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned with smoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot out on the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu. His Indians, remembering the dangers of that southern country, scarcely hoped to see him again. Marquette, though a young man, was of no such sturdy build as Jolliet. Among descendants of the Ottawas you may still hear the tradition that he had a "white face, and long hair the color of the sun" flowing to the shoulders of his black robe. The watching figures dwindled, as did the palisaded settlement. Hugging the shore, the canoes entered Lake Michigan, or, as it was then called, the Lake of the Illinois. All the islands behind seemed to meet and intermingle and to cover themselves with blue haze as they went down on the water. Priest and trader, their skins moist with the breath of the lake, each in his own canoe, faced silently the unknown world toward which they were venturing. The shaggy coast line bristled with evergreens, and though rocky, it was low, unlike the white cliffs of Michilimackinac. Marquette had made a map from the descriptions of the Illinois Indians. The canoes were moving westward on the course indicated by his map. He was peculiarly gifted as a missionary, for already he spoke six Indian languages, and readily adapted himself to any dialect. Marquette, the records tell us, came of "an old and honorable family of Laon," in northern France. Century after century the Marquettes bore high honors in Laon, and their armorial bearings commemorated devotion to the king in distress. In our own Revolutionary War it is said that three Marquettes fought for us with La Fayette. No young man of his time had a pleasanter or easier life offered him at home than Jacques Marquette. But he chose to devote himself to missionary labor in the New World, and had already helped to found three missions, enduring much hardship. Indian half-breeds, at what is now called the "Soo," on St. Mary's River, betwixt Lake Huron and Lake Superior, have a tradition that Father Marquette and Father Dablon built their missionary station on a tiny island of rocks, not more than two canoe lengths from shore, on the American side. But men who have written books declare it was on the bank below the rapids. [Illustration: Autograph of Jolliet.]