Southwards again they went as far as the Arkansas, where, fearing the Spaniards, who were in that part of the country, they turned northwards, and following the advice of the Indians, they entered the Illinois River. Marquette was greatly impressed with the fertility of that wonderful valley, and well he might be, for his experience hitherto in New France had not been in very fertile regions. “I have seen,” said he, “nothing like this river for the fertility of the land, its prairies, woods, wild cattle, stag, deer, wild cats, bustards, swans, ducks, parrots and even beaver, its many little lakes and rivers.” On that river, in the great Indian village of Kaskaskia, seven miles below the present city of Ottawa, Illinois, Marquette was so kindly treated that he promised to return to them as soon as he could. Following up one of the branches of the river they portaged across only about 1,000 paces and put their canoes into a little stream that emptied into Lake Michigan. That portage is where stands to-day the city of Chicago, the great city of the State called after the Indians for whom Marquette had made the journey. Along the shore they went, across the portage at Sturgeon Bay, and at the end of September reached the mission at Green Bay, where they spent the winter. Early in the spring they separated, Marquette to return to his mission to recruit his strength that he might redeem his promise to his Indian friends at Kaskaskia, Joliet to report to Frontenac the result of his voyage. Unfortunately, Joliet’s canoe was upset in the Lachine rapids and all his papers, including the map of the discovered region, were lost. In his report he said, with the insight of the prophet: “We could easily go to Florida in a ship, and with very easy navigation. It would only be necessary to make a canal by cutting through but half a league of prairie to pass from the foot of the lake of the Illinois (Michigan) to the River St. Louis (Des Plaines),”—and we have lived to see that done in the great sanitary and ship canal connecting the Chicago River with the Des Plaines River at the present city of Joliet. Joliet held minor positions until 1680, when he was granted fishing rights in the lower St. Lawrence and later the island of Anticosti was included. But in 1690 the English invasion under Phips destroyed his establishment and ten years later he died in poverty. Marquette, weak in body but with a giant spirit, was preparing himself to fulfil his promise and in the fall of the next year, 1674, he started for Kaskaskia. Bad weather and his physical weakness made him halt so many times that it was April before he reached the village. Here he was welcomed as an angel from heaven, and on the Easter Sunday, before an altar erected on the prairie at the edge of the great wood, he preached to thousands of the Indians as they squatted in a semi-circle, chiefs, young men, women and children, to hear the impressive words of the black-robed missionary.