These Indians tried to dissuade them from going on; but Marquette was resolute, and on the 10th of June, 1673, he led his followers over the swamps and marshes that separated Fox River from a river which the Indian guides assured him flowed into the Mississippi.

This westward-flowing river he called the Wisconsin, and there the guides left him, as he says, "alone, amid that unknown country, in the hands of God." The little band shoved their canoes boldly out upon the river, and for seven days floated slowly downward into the unknown.

At last, on the 17th of June, they paddled out on the bosom of the Mississippi, and, turning their canoes to the south, followed the bends and twists of the river, past the mouth of the Missouri, past the Ohio, to a point not far from the mouth of the Arkansas.

There the voyage ended, and the party went slowly back to the Lakes.[1] [Footnote 1: Read Parkman's _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_.] %56.

La Salle finishes the Work of Marquette and Joliet.%--The discovery of Marquette and Joliet was the greatest of the age.