Two score years later the bold missionaries, Joliet and Marquette, entered the Fox River and came to Maskoutens, "the fire Nation." "Here," wrote Marquette, "is the limit of the discoveries which the french have made, for they have not yet gone any farther." Of Radissou and Groseilliers no memory was left among the savages, and of them Marquette had never heard. "No sooner had we arrived," Marquette wrote in his _Journal_, "than we, Monsieur Jollyet and I assembled the elders together; and he told them that he was sent by Monsieur Our Governor to discover New countries, while I was sent by God to Illumine them with the light of the holy Gospel. He told them that, moreover, the sovereign Master of our lives wished to be known by all the Nations; and that in obeying his will I feared not the death to which I exposed myself in voyages so perilous. He informed them that we needed two guides to show us the way; and We gave them a present, by it asking them to grant us the guides. To this they very Civilly consented; and they also spoke to us by means of a present, consisting of a Mat to serve us as a bed during the whole of our voyage. On the following day, the tenth of June two Miamis who were given us as guides embarked with us.... We knew that, at three leagues from Maskoutens, was a River which discharged into Mississippi. We knew also that the direction we were to follow in order to reach it was west-southwesterly. But the road is broken by so many swamps and small lakes that it is easy to lose one's way, especially as the River leading thither is so full of wild oats that it is difficult to find the Channel. For this reason we greatly needed our two guides, who safely Conducted us to a portage of 2,700 paces, and helped us to transport our Canoes to enter That river; ... Thus we left the Waters flowing to Quebeq, 4 or 500 Leagues from here, to float on Those that would thenceforward Take us through strange lands."[92] By the feet of such undaunted heroes the Fox-Wisconsin portage path was made hallowed ground. But the importance of this route, in the days when Georgian Bay was the entering point of the French into the Great Lakes, did not rapidly diminish; through all pioneer history, when Mackinac and Detroit were the key of the Lakes, this route to the Mississippi was important. For instance, in the fur trade of the West and of Wisconsin in particular, this portage was of utmost moment.[93] In the preceding pages this matter of the fur trade on portages has not been sufficiently suggested; it is, however, a subject on which important and exhaustive histories should be written. The portages were, in numerous instances, the keys of the fur trade.