18

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

received Tonty in State, surrounded by sixty old men clothed in
white cloaks. There was a temple in the town, with a mud wall
about it ornamented with skulls of enemies sacrificed to the sun.

The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the
present city of that name, where they found a e religious and political
despotism, a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a
sacred fire.' It must have been like getting home again; it was
home with an advantage, in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV.

THE TEMPLE WALL.
A few more days swept
swiftly by, and La Salle stood
in the shadow of his confiscating cross, at the meeting of the waters
from Delaware, and from Itaska, and from the mountain ranges close
upon the Pacific, with the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his task
finished, his prodigy achieved. Mr. Parkman, in closing his fascina-
ting narrative, thus sums up:
* On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a stu-
pendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the
Mississippi, from its firozen northern springs to the sultry borders of