It was not until Dec. 8, 1672, that he reached the Straits of Mackinaw, and as the rivers between that point and the Mississippi were by this time frozen, he remained there during the winter and following spring, busy in questioning the Indians who had seen the great river as to its course, and as to the nations on its shores. On May 17, 1673, he began his journey toward a distant sea. At Mackinaw he found Marquette, who became his companion, but had no official connection with the expedition, as erroneously mentioned by Charlevoix. With five _voyageurs_ and two birch-bark canoes, Joliet and Marquette, by the 7th of June, had reached a settlement of Kikapous, Miamis, and Mascoutens, in the valley of the Fox River, and three leagues beyond they found a short portage by which they reached the Wisconsin River, and following its tortuous course amid sandbars and islands dense with bushes, on the 17th of June they entered the broad great river called the Mississippi, walled in by picturesque bluffs, with lofty limestone escarpment, whose irregular outline looked like a succession of the ruined castles and towers of the Rhine. In honor of his patron, Governor Frontenac, Joliet called it Buade, the Governor’s family name. Passing one great river flowing from the west, he learned that through its valley there was a route to the Vermeille Sea [Gulf of California], and he saw a village (which was about five days’ journey from another) which traded with the people of California.[477] This river is without name on his map,[478] but on its banks he places villages of the Missouri, Kansa, Osages, and Pawnee tribes. The River Ohio he marked with the Indian name Ouabouskigou; and the Arkansas, beyond which he did not descend, and which was reached about the middle of July, he named Bazire, after a prominent merchant of Quebec interested in the fur-trade. After ascending the stream, he entered the Illinois River, which he designated as the Divine, or Outrelaise, in compliment, it is supposed, to Frontenac’s wife, a daughter of Lagrange Trianon, noted for her beauty, and Mademoiselle Outrelaise, her fascinating friend, who were called in Court circles “les divines.”[479] Upon the west bank of one of its tributaries, the Des Plaine River, there stands above the prairie a remarkable elevation of clay, sand, and gravel, a lonely monument which has withstood the erosion of a former geologic age. It was a noted landmark to the Indians in their hunting, and to the French _voyageurs_ on their trading expeditions. By this Joliet was impressed, and he gave the elevation his own name, Mont Joliet, which it has retained, while all the others he marked on his map have been forgotten.[480] It was not until about the middle of August, 1674, that he returned to Quebec, and Governor Frontenac, on the 14th of November, writes to the French Government,—