The winter was spent by the two explorers in studying all that had yet been learned of the great river, in gathering around them every Indian wanderer, and amid the tawny group drawing their first rude map of the Mississippi, and the water courses that led to it. And on this first map, traced doubtless kneeling on the ground, they set down the name of each tribe they were to pass, each important point to be met. The undertaking was dangerous, but it was not to be rash: all was the result of calm, cool investigation. In the spring they embarked at Mackinaw in two frail bark canoes; each with his paddle in hand, and full of hope, they soon plied them merrily over the crystal waters of the lake. [Illustration: “THEY HAPPILY GLIDED INTO THE GREAT RIVER.”] All was new to Marquette. He had now attained the limit of former discoveries, the new world was before them; they looked back a last adieu to the waters, which, great as the distance was, connected them with Quebec and their countrymen; they knelt on the shore to offer, by a new devotion, their lives, their honor, and their undertaking to their beloved mother the Virgin Mary Immaculate; then, launching on the broad Wisconsin, they sailed slowly down its current, amid its vine-clad isles and its countless sand bars. No sound broke the stillness, no human form appeared, and at last, after sailing seven days, on the 17th of June they happily glided into the great river. Joy that could find no utterance in words filled the grateful heart of Marquette. The broad river of the Conception, as he named it, now lay before them, stretching away hundreds of miles to an unknown sea. “The Mississippi River,” he writes, “has its source in several lakes in the country of the nations at the north; it is narrow at the mouth of the Wisconsin; its current, which runs south, is slow and gentle. On the right is a considerable chain of very high mountains, and on the left fine lands; it is in many places studded with islands. On sounding we found ten fathoms of water. Its breadth varies greatly; sometimes it is three quarters of a league broad, and then narrows in to less than two hundred yards. We followed its course quietly, as it bears south and southeast to the forty-second degree. “Then we perceive that the whole face of the country changes. Scarcely a forest or mountain is now in sight. The islands increase in beauty and are covered with finer trees; we see nothing but deer and elk, wild geese and swans unable to fly, as they are here moulting. From time to time we encounter monstrous fish, one of which struck our canoe with such violence that I took it for a large tree that would knock our frail craft to pieces. Another time we perceived on the water a bearded monster with a tiger’s head, a pointed muzzle like a wild cat; ears erect, a gray head but a jet-black neck. It was the only one we beheld.