La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

1682.] PRUDHOMME. 297his canoes alone. They embarked again, floatingprosperously down between the leafless forests thatflanked the tranquil river; till, on the sixth ofFebruary, they issued upon the majestic bosom ofthe Mississippi. Here, for the time, their progresswas stopped ; for the river was full of floating ice.La Salle's Indians, too, had lagged behind; butwithin a week all had arrived, the navigation wasonce more free, and they resumed their course.Towards evening they saw on their right the mouthof a great river ; and the clear current was invadedby the headlong torrent of the Missouri, opaque withmud. They built their camp-fires in the neighboringforest;and at daylight, embarking anew on the darkand mighty stream, drifted swiftly down towardsunknown destinies. They passed a deserted town ofthe Tamaroas; saw, three days after, the mouth ofthe Ohio ; * and, gliding by the wastes of borderingswamp, landed on the twenty-fourth of February nearthe Third Chickasaw Bluffs. 2 They encamped, andthe hunters went out for game.All returned, exceptingPierre Prudhomme ; and as the others had seenfresh tracks of Indians, La Salle feared that he waskilled. While some of his followers built a smallstockade fort on a high bluff 3 by the river, othersI1Called by Membre the Ouabache (Wabash).2La Salle, Relation de la Decouverte de VEmbouchure, etc. ; Thomassy,10. Membre gives the same date ; but the Proces Verbalmakes it the twenty-sixth.8 Gravier, in his letter of 16 Feb., 1701, says that he encampednear a " great bluff of stone, called Fort Prudhomme, because M. de