They sailed along their solitary way and were soon rewarded by hearing the rush of the swifter, more turbulent, muddy waters of the Missouri, which seemed from thereon to enhance the speed of the current. They went on past the mouths of the Ohio and the Arkansas, where they found savages who spoke a new tongue and were armed with guns, proof that they had trafficked with the Spaniards from the Gulf of Mexico, or with the English from Virginia. These exhibiting hostility which was only allayed by the peace pipe, they retreated and sailed back up the river. When Marquette reached the Illinois he entered and ascended that river where he beheld the magnificent fertility and coloring inuring to the late summer and early autumn of the extensive plains and vast wooded tracts of Illinois. An easy portage brought him to the Chicago River, a short stream whose waters are now reversed and flow into the Illinois. Some authorities claim Marquette to have been the first white man to set foot upon the site of Chicago (1673). Others[28] state that the French Jesuit Nicholas Perrot and his party of fur traders pitched their tent on its prairies the latter part of 1669. To Marquette, however, belongs the honor of discovering two very important routes to the Mississippi Valley; the one by way of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, and the other by way of the Illinois. Unfortunately the hardships of this journey undermined his health and the next year (1674) a half hour after he had retired for devotion to a small altar of stones on the banks of a little stream now called by his name, he was found dead. Thus judged by the extent and value of the territory traversed, passed away, at the early age of thirty-one, one of our country’s greatest explorers.