After touching at several other towns of this people, the voyagers resumed their course, guided by two of the Arkansas; passed the sites, since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf; and, about three hundred miles below the Arkansas, stopt by the edge of a swamp on the western side of the river.  Here, as their two guides told them, was the path to the great town of the Taensas.  Tonty and Membre were sent to visit it.  They and their men shouldered their birch canoe through the swamp, and launched it on a lake which had once formed a portion of the channel of the river.

In two hours they reached the town; and Tonty gazed at it with astonishment.  He had seen nothing like it in America:  large square dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, arched over with a dome-shaped roof of canes, and placed in regular order around an open area.  Two of them were larger and better than the rest.  One was the lodge of the chief; the other was the temple, or house of the sun.  They entered the former, and found a single room, forty feet square, where, in the dim light,—­for there was no opening but the door,—­the chief sat awaiting them on a sort of bedstead, three of his wives at his side, while sixty old men, wrapt in white cloaks woven of mulberry-bark, formed his divan.  When he spoke, his wives howled to do him honor; and the assembled councilors listened with the reverence due to a potentate for whom, at his death, a hundred victims were to be sacrificed.  He received the visitors graciously, and joyfully accepted the gifts which Tonty laid before him.  This interview over, the Frenchmen repaired to the temple, wherein were kept the bones of the departed chiefs.  In construction, it was much like the royal dwelling.  Over it were rude wooden figures, representing three eagles turned toward the east.  A strong mud wall surrounded it, planted with stakes, on which were stuck the skulls of enemies sacrificed to the Sun; while before the door was a block of wood, on which lay a large shell surrounded with the braided hair of the victims.  The interior was rude as a barn, dimly lighted from the doorway, and full of smoke.  There was a structure in the middle which Membre thinks was a kind of altar; and before it burned a perpetual fire, fed with three logs laid end to end, and watched by two old men devoted to this sacred office.  There was a mysterious recess, too, which the strangers were forbidden to explore, but which, as Tonty was told, contained the riches of the nation, consisting of pearls from the Gulf, and trinkets obtained, probably through other tribes, from the Spaniards and other Europeans....

On the next morning, as they descended the river, they saw a wooden canoe full of Indians; and Tonty gave chase.  He had nearly overtaken it, when more than a hundred men appeared suddenly on the shore, with bows bent to defend their countrymen.  La Salle called out to Tonty to withdraw.  He obeyed; and the whole party encamped on the opposite bank.  Tonty offered to cross the river with a peace-pipe, and set out accordingly with a small party of men.  When he landed, the Indians made signs of friendship by joining their hands,—­a proceeding by which Tonty, having but one hand, was somewhat embarrassed[3]; but he directed his men to respond in his stead.