CHAPTER XI.

Alas Poor Mexico !—Marquette and Joliet-La Salle-His pretended retirement from the Order of Jesus-His Fur Monopoly-He Descends the Mississippi to its mouth-His Death-Remarks-Commencement of the Second Intercolonial War.

POOR MEXICO! delivered over to the tender mercies of Catholic "Missionary effort," how hast thou thriven? how grown apace in godliness and gold-in temporal and spiritual prosperity? Whither fled the god-born line of Moteuczoma, the far descended from the imperial loins of the Child of the Sun-Acamapitzin (he who has reeds in his fist), the first king of the rush-floated colony who had founded the empire of Mexico? Whither vanished the splendors of that haughty line? where those floating gardens, concerning the boundless magnificence and extent of which Cortez writes to Charles V, his master, that not all the royal gardens of Europe can afford a comparison of their grandeur? Where the huge temples to the God of Fire, with their myriad simple votaries to a strange but bloody creed? their splendid festivals of flowers, and dance, and feast, which made the round of the abundant year? Where the innumerable cities, hewn from huge blocks of stone, or piled as solidly from the imperishable sun-burnt bricks? Where the prodigious aqueducts and endless causeways which far surpassed the glories of old Rome? Where the mighty treasures of gold and silver- of priceless gems and arts as priceless? Where the pictured histories which, preserving the ancient story of a New World in graphic forms, was the rightful property of mankind?

"Where are these archives?" thunders "Sam.” “ Where are these treasures? Where these precious gems and more precious arts? Where the mighty "Ways"-these fast-built

cities these simple and happy millions, making merry amid peaceful abundance? Where the lost architecture? Where the ghosts of my majestic brothers, the Moteuczoma?" "Sent to Purgatory, because they have not paid for masses enough yet to buy their way out," echoes a sepulchral answer from the tumbled ruins of fallen, desolate and ravished empire! Mexico is no more; she is but a myth, a fragment of the past; she has been "conserved" and converted by the Catholic Church! What more can be said? Amen. But to return to our proposed survey of the movements of the French Jesuits toward the South, of which La Salle is the principal hero.

The Jesuit Marquette had previously explored, in company with Joliet, a French trader, through the Wisconsin river, the upper waters of the Mississippi, as far as the mouth of the Arkansas, but were turned back from that point by the reports of dangerous and hostile tribes below. The discov eries of Marquette amounted to little more than convicting the heretofore entertained theory that the Mississippi discharged itself into the Chesapeake Bay instead of the Gulf of Mexico.

Among other adventurers who had passed over to New France since its transfer to the French West India Company, was the young La Salle, a native of Rouen, educated as a Jesuit, but who went to Canada to seek his fortune by discovering an over-land passage to China and Japan. After giving proofs of sagacious activity by explorations in Lakes. Ontario and Erie, he had returned to France, and had obtained there from the king, to whom Canada had reverted since the recent dissolution of the West India Company, the grant of Fort Frontenac, a post at the outlet of Ontario, on the spot where Kingston now stands, built three years before by the Count de Frontenac, who had succeeded at that time. to the office of Governor-General. On condition of keeping up that post, La Salle received the grant of a wide circuit of the neighboring country, and an exclusive right of trade with the Iroquois, as a check upon whom the fort had been built. But his ardent and restless disposition was not thus to be satisfied. Fired by reports of the recently discovered great river of the West, while Virginia was distracted by Bacon's insurrection, and New England yet smarting under

the effects of Philip's war, La Salle left his fur trade, his fields, his cattle, his vessels and his Indian dependents at Fort Frontenac, and, repairing to France a second time, obtained a royal commission for perfecting the discovery of the Mississippi, and, at the same time, a monopoly of the trade in buffalo skins, which seemed likely to prove the chief staple of that region.

Thus successful in his mission, La Salle returned to Fort Frontenac with men and stores to prosecute his enterprise, accompanied by the Chevalier Tonti, an Italian soldier, who acted as his lieutenant. Before winter, he ascended Lake Ontario, entered the Niagara, and passing round the falls, selected a spot at the foot of Lake Erie, not far from the present site of Buffalo, where he commenced building the "Griffin," a bark of sixty tons. This bark, in the course of the next summer, was equipped with sails and cordage brought from Fort Frontenac, and in the autumn, first of civilized vessels, she plowed her way up Lake Erie, bearing La Salle, Tonti, the Fleming Hennepin, and several other friars of the Recollect order. Sixty sailors, boatmen, hunters and soldiers made up the company. Having entered Detroit, "the strait" or river at the head of Lake Erie, they passed through it into that limpid sheet of water, to which La Salle gave the characteristic name of St. Clair. Hence they ascended by a second strait into Lake Huron, and through the length of that great lake, by the Straits of Mackinaw, into Lake Michigan, whence they passed into Green Bay, and, after a voyage of twenty days, cast anchor at its head, thus first tracing a passage now fast becoming one of the great highways of commerce.

The Griffin was sent back with a rich lading of furs, under orders to return with provisions and supplies, to be conveyed to the head of Lake Michigan; but, unfortunately, she was shipwrecked on her homeward passage. La Salle and his company proceeded, meanwhile, in birch-bark canoes, up Lake Michigan, to the mouth of the St. Joseph's, where already there was a Jesuit mission. Here they built a fort called the Post of the Miamis, the name by which the river was then known. La Salle, with most of his people, presently crossed to a branch of the Illinois, down which they descended into the main stream, on whose banks, below

Peoria, they built a second fort, called Crevecoeur (Heartbreak), to signify their disappointment at the non-arrival of the Griffin, of which nothing had yet been heard.

To hasten or replace the necessary supplies, the ardent and determined La Salle set off on foot, with only three attendants, and, following the dividing ridge which separates the tributaries of the lakes from those of the Ohio, he made his way back again to Fort Frontenac, where he found his affairs in the greatest confusion, himself reported dead, and his property seized by his creditors. But, by the Governor's aid, he made arrangements which enabled him to continue the prosecution of his enterprise.

During La Salle's absence, in obedience to orders previously given, Dacan and Hennepin descended the Illinois to the Mississippi, and, turning northward, explored that river as high up as the Falls of St. Anthony. On their way back they entered the Wisconsin, and, by the Fox river, passed to Green Bay; whence Hennepin returned to Quebec and to France, where he wrote and published an account of his travels.

Tonti, meanwhile, attacked by the Iroquois, who had made a sudden onslaught on the Illinois villages, fled also to Green Bay; and, when La Salle returned the next autumn with recruits and supplies, he found Forts Miami and Crevecœur deserted. Having built a new fort in the country of the Illinois, which he called St. Louis, with indefatigable energy he returned again to Frontenac, encountering Tonti on his way; and, having collected a new company, came back the same year to the Illinois, and during the winter built and rigged a small barge, in which, at length, he descended to the gulf. Formal possession of the mouth of the river was cercmoniously taken for the King of France. The country on the banks of the Mississippi received the name of LOUISIANA, in honor of Louis XIV, then at the hight of his power and reputation; but the attempt to fix upon the river itself the name of Colbert did not succeed.

Having made his way back to Quebec, leaving Tonti in command at Fort St. Louis, La Salle returned a third time to France, whither the news of his discovery had preceded him, and had excited great expectations. In spite of representations from Canada by his enemies, of whom his harsh

and overbearing temper made him many, he was presently furnished with a frigate and three other ships, on board of which embarked five priests, twelve gentlemen, fifty soldiers, a number of hired mechanics, and a small body of volunteer agricultural emigrants, well furnished with tools and provisions; in all two hundred and eighty persons, designed to plant a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi.

Informed of this intended enterprise, Tonti, with twenty Canadians and thirty Indians, descended from Fort St. Louis to meet his old commander. But La Salle's vessels missed the entrance to the Mississippi, passed to the westward, and after a vain search for the river's mouth, landed their feeble and dispirited company at some undetermined spot on the coast of Texas. A fort was built and named St. Louis. La Salle, with characteristic activity, in the vain hope of finding the Mississippi, penetrated and explored the surrounding country. No succors came from France; the only vessel left with the colonists was wrecked; victims to the climate, to home-sickness, and despair, they were presently reduced to thirty-six persons. In this extremity, La Salle set off with sixteen men, determined to reach Canada by land; but, after three months' wanderings, he was murdered by two mutinous companions. The murderers were themselves murdered; some of the men joined the Indians; finally, five of them reached a point at the mouth of the Arkansas, where Tonti, returning disappointed from the gulf, had established a little post. With the Indians nearest the mouth of the Mississippi Tonti left a letter to La Salle, which they faithfully preserved for fourteen years, and delivered to the first Frenchmen who made their appearance.

The twenty men left by La Salle at Fort St. Louis obscurely perished, and even the site of the fort passed into oblivion. Yet France in after times claimed the region thus transiently occupied as a part of Louisiana. The same claim was revived more than a century afterward on behalf of the United States, to which Louisiana had been transferred by purchase.

This is Hildreth's account of La Salle and his career. But it may be as well to specify, in commenting upon this narrative, that Bancroft takes good care to mention that "La Salle being of a good family, he had renounced his inherit