While here they built themselves a thatch shelter, acting on Ross's advice, and they were very glad that they did so, as a tremendous rain fell a few days after it was finished, deluging the country and swelling all the creeks and lagoons.

So they concluded to stay until the earth returned to comparative dryness again in the sunshine, and meanwhile their horses, which did not stand the journey as well as their masters, could recuperate.
Two days after they resumed the journey, they stood on the low banks of the Mississippi and looked at its vast yellow current flowing in a mile-wide channel, and bearing upon its muddy bosom, bushes and trees, torn from slopes thousands of miles away.

It was not beautiful, it was not even picturesque, but its size, its loneliness and its desolation gave it a somber grandeur, which all the travelers felt.

It was the same river that had received De Soto's body many generations before, and it was still a mystery.
"We know where it goes to, for the sea receives them all," said Mr.
Pennypacker, "but no man knows whence it comes." "And it would take a good long trip to find out," said Sol.
"A trip that we haven't time to take," returned the schoolmaster.
Henry felt a desire to make that journey, to follow the great stream, month after month, until he traced it to the last fountain and uncovered its secret.

The power that grips the explorer, that draws him on through danger, known and unknown, held him as he gazed.
They followed the banks of the stream at a slow pace to the north, sweltering in the heat which seemed to come to a focus here at the confluence of great waters, until at last they reached a wide extent of low country overgrown with bushes and cut with a broad yellow band coming down from the northeast.
"The Ohio!" said Ross.
And so it was; it was here that the stream called by the Indians "The Beautiful River"-- though not deserving the name at this place--lost itself in the Mississippi and at the junction it seemed full as mighty a river as the great Father of Waters himself.
They did not stay long at the meeting of the two rivers, fearing the miasma of the marshy soil, but retreated to the hills where they went into camp again.