f Laon," in
northern France. Century after century the Marquettes bore high honors
in Laon, and their armorial bearings commemorated devotion to the
king in distress. In our own Revolutionary War it is said that three
Marquettes fought for us with La Fayette. No young man of his time had
a pleasanter or easier life offered him at home than Jacques Marquette.
But he chose to devote himself to missionary labor in the New World,
and had already helped to found three missions, enduring much hardship.
Indian half-breeds, at what is now called the "Soo," on St. Mary's
River, betwixt Lake Huron and Lake Superior, have a tradition that
Father Marquette and Father Dablon built their missionary station on
a tiny island of rocks, not more than two canoe lengths from shore, on
the American side. But men who have written books declare it was on the
bank below the rapids.

[Illustration: Autograph of Jolliet.]

Jolliet had come of different though not less worthy stock. He was
Canadian born, the son of a wagon-maker in Quebec; and he had been well
educated, and possessed an active, adventurous mind. He was dressed for
this expedition in the tough buckskin hunting suit which frontiersmen
then wore. But Marquette retained the long black cassock of the priest.
Their five voyageurs--or trained woodsmen--in more or less stained
buckskin and caps of fur, sent the canoes shooting over the water with
scarcely a sound, dipping a paddle now on this side and now on that,
Indian fashion; Marquette and Jolliet taking turns with them as the
day progressed. For any man, whether voyageur, priest, or seignior,
who did not know how to paddle a canoe, if occasion demanded, was at
sore disadvantage in the New World.

The first day of any journey, before one meets weariness or anxiety and
disappointment, remains always the freshest in memory. When the sun went
down, leaving violet shadows on the chill lake, they drew their boats
on shore; and Pierre Porteret and another Frenchman, named Jacques,
gathered driftwood to make a fire, while the rest of the crew unpacked
the cargo. They turned each canoe on its side, propping the ends with
sticks driven into the ground, thus making canopies like half-roofs to
shelter them for the night.

"The Sieur Jolliet says it is not always that we may light a camp-fire,"
said Pierre Porteret to Jacques, as he struck a spark into his tinder
with the flint and steel which a woodsman carried everywhere.

"He is not lik