The things we do!

Accordingly, he stands upon the edge of the
prairies in a robe of Chinese damask embroidered with flowers and birds--
but with a pistol in each hand. Having succeeded in his mission to these
barbarians (for such he found them to be, wearing breech-clouts instead of
robes of silk), he was impelled or lured over into the great valley, it is
believed. He passed from the lake on the border of Champlain's map
[Footnote: Lake Michigan.] up a river (the Fox) that by and by became but
a stream over which one might jump. He portaged from this stream or creek
across a narrow strip of prairie, only a mile wide, to the Wisconsin
River, a tributary of the Mississippi. The statement over which I have
pondered, walking along that river, that he might have reached the "great
water" in three more days, is intelligible only in this interpretation of
his course.
The next Europeans to look out over the edge of the basin of the lakes
were two other sons of France, one a man of St. Malo, Radisson, a voyageur
and coureur de bois, the other his brother-in-law, Groseilliers (1654).


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