Father Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary priest, came to North America to share his faith with native people and joined an expedition led by Louis Jolliet, commissioned in 1673 by the Governor of New France to explore the Mississippi River and determine whether it was an inland water route to the Pacific Ocean. Marquette and Jolliet departed from St. Ignace in birch bark canoes, traveled on the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi River, and continued as far south as the Arkansas River before concluding that the Mississippi flowed to the Gulf of Mexico and turning back upstream. On their return they went up the Illinois River, passing by what is now the park, and Marquette's journal recorded the first written description of the land that is now Illinois, praising the fertility of its prairies and woods, its wild cattle, elk, deer, wildcats, bustards, swans, ducks, parrots, and beaver, and its many small lakes and rivers. Before the voyage, some Menominee Indians had warned Marquette of horrible monsters that devoured men and canoes, and near present-day Alton, Illinois, Marquette and Jolliet saw high on the river bluffs a painting of two monsters that Marquette wrote initially frightened them. Later generations came to know legendary figures painted on the bluffs near Alton as the Piasa Bird, but the creatures in Marquette's account did not have wings, and weathering erased the image from the bluffs only decades after his observation, leaving its actual location and appearance uncertain.