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Theirs was the talk of tried friends; droning on for a time in amused comment, rising to sudden table-pounding enthusiasms over aviators or explorers, with exclamations of, "Is that the way it struck you, too? I'm awfully glad to hear you say that, because that's just the way I felt about it."
It was expected that if hostile Indians should attack the explorers anywhere within the limits of the little-known parts through which they were to make their way, such attacks were more likely to be made below the Mandan country than elsewhere. The duties of the explorers were numerous and important.
They went away down into the Gulf of Guinea, and with many a call by the way to discharge cargo, approached the mouth of the Congo, whose flood gave a tawny colour to the sea. So far they had seen nothing but the squalid fringe of the Continent, and the damp heat had steamed them and tried them, but the young explorers had not lost the fine edge of their imagination.
The explorers sailed up the James, diverging here and there into the tortuous creeks of the Chickahominy. Attempting to land at "Powhatan," one of "the emperor's" residences, he and his guide sank into the morass and were fired upon from the shore.
Radisson had been tortured among the Mohawks and besieged among the Onondagas. Groseillers had been among the Huron missions that were destroyed and among the Algonquin canoes that were attacked. Both explorers knew what perils awaited them; but what youthful blood ever chilled at prospect of danger when a single coup might win both wealth and fame?
There are traces all over the hills of vast forests having once existed; chiefly of totara, a sort of red pine, and those about us are scattered with huge logs of this valuable wood, all bearing traces of the action of fire; but shepherds, and explorers on expeditions, looking for country, have gradually consumed them for fuel, till not many pieces remain except on the highest and most inaccessible ranges.
Deeds were here done as great in valour as those which led to the conquest of a Mexico or the acquisition of a Peru. But unlike the captains and conquerors of the South, the explorers have come and gone and left behind no trace of their passage. Their hopes of a land of gold, their vision of a new sea-way round the world, are among the forgotten dreams of the past.
But he believes it may exist, somewhere far, far east, beyond walls of mountains and shifting sand-dunes, between the Sahara and the Libyan deserts." "Wouldn't other explorers have found it, if it were there?" "Lots have tried, and been lost themselves: or else they've given up hope, after terrible privations, and have struggled back to their starting-place.
A forced march was now necessary for the explorers, and they set out as speedily as possible, well knowing that the Indians would be on their trail. By three o'clock in the afternoon of that day they had reached Tansy River, now known as the Teton, having travelled sixty-three miles.
They were brought in like wild beasts, immediately baptized, and their Christianization commenced. Kotzebue, one of the early Russian explorers, says that in his time he saw them at Santa Clara driven into the church like a flock of sheep, by an old ragged Spaniard, armed with a stick.
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