In those early days, no exploring party was complete without a priest; the conversion of the savages to Christianity was quite as important, in the eyes of the king, as the development of the fur trade. Father Jacques Marquette, then thirty-six years of age, was the Jesuit missionary at Point St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinac. When Joliet reached that outpost, after a long and weary canoe voyage up the now familiar Ottawa River and Georgian Bay route, he delivered orders to Marquette to join his party. Joliet was a favorite with his old instructors, the Jesuits, so that the two young men were well pleased with being united upon this project, Joliet to attend to the worldly affairs of the expedition, and Marquette to the religious. Both of them had had long training in the hard life of the wilderness, and understood Indian character and habits as well as any men in New France. It was upon the 17th of May, 1673, that the two explorers, in high spirits, set forth from Marquette's little mission at Point Ignace. Five French boatmen paddled their two canoes, and did most of the heavy work of the journey, carrying the boats and cargoes around rapids, or along portage trails from one river to another. Marquette says in his journal: "Our joy at being chosen for this expedition roused our courage, and sweetened the labor of paddling from morning to night." The course they took was, no doubt, that followed through nearly two hundred years thereafter by persons journeying in canoes from Mackinac to Green Bay. They paddled along the northern shores of Lake Michigan and Green Bay, until they could cross over through the stormy water known as "Death's Door," to the islands beyond the Door county peninsula; and then crept down the east shore of Green Bay, under the lee of the high banks. They seem to have made good time, for on the 7th of June they reached the village of the Mascoutins, on the south shore of Fox River, near where Berlin now is, the same village, it will be remembered, where Nicolet, Radisson, and Allouez had already been entertained. We do not know upon what day our two explorers had reached De Pere, where the Jesuit mission was established, but they probably stayed among their friends there for some days, before going up the Fox.