12

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

rapid current coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights
wrapped thick in forests/ He continues : * Turning southward, they
paddled down the stream, through a solitude unrelieved by the faintest
trace of man.'

A big cat-fish collided with Marquette's canoe, and startled him;
and reasonably enough, for he had been warned by the Indians that
he was on a foolhardy journey, and even a fatal one, for the river
contained a demon ' whose roar could be heard at a great distance,

CROSSING THE LAKES.
and who would engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.' I have
seen a Mississippi cat-fish that was more than six feet long, and
weighed two hundred and fifty pounds; and if Marquette's fish was
the fellow to that one, he had a fair right to think the river's roaring
demon was come.
* At length the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on the
great prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette describes
the fierce and stupid look of the old bulls as they stared at the
intruders through the tangled mane which nearly blinded them.'