We were now at the foot of the Wisconsin Valley--at the point, in fact, where Marquette and Joliet, coming from the forests and lakes of New France, had discovered the great River of the West, in 1673. Marquette, led by his rubrics, named it the River "Conception," but, in his journal, he freely employs the aboriginal term of Mississippi, which was in use by the whole body of the Algonquin tribes. While awaiting, at Prairie du Chein, the preparations for ascending the Wisconsin, the locality was found a very remarkable one for its large unios, and some other species of fresh-water shells. Some specimens of the unio crassus, found on the shores of the island in the Mississippi, opposite the village, were of thrice the size of any noticed in America or Europe, and put conchologists in doubt whether the species should not be named _giganteus_.[119] I had, in coming down the Mississippi, procured some fine and large specimens of the unio purpureus of Mr. Say, at the Painted Rock, with some other species; and the discovery of such large species of the crassus served to direct new attention to the subject. [119] American Journal of Science, vol. vi. p. 119. Our sympathies were excited, at this place, by observing an object of human deformity in the person of an Indian, who, to remedy the want of the power of locomotion, had adjusted his legs in a large wooden bowl. By rocking this on the ground, he supplied, in a manner, the lost locomotive power. This man of the bowl possessed his faculties of mind unimpaired, spoke several Indian languages, besides the Canadian French, and appeared cheerful and intelligent. An excursion into the adjacent country, to view some caves, and a reported mineral locality made by Mr. Trowbridge, during my descent to the mines of Dubuque, brought me some concretions of carbonate of lime, but the Indian guides either faltered to make the promised discoveries, through their superstitions, or really failed in the effort to find the object. By tracing the shores of the Mississippi, I found the rolled and hard agates and other quartz species, which characterize the pebble-drift of its sources, still present in the down-flowing shore-drift. The aboriginal name of this place is Kipesági, an Algonquin word, which is applied to the mouth or outflow of the Wisconsin River. It appears to be based on the verb _kipa_, to be thick or turbid, and _sauge_, outflow--the river at its floods, being but little else than a moving mass of sand and water.