he received from the professors
a testimonial of his high intellectual attainments and his unblemished
moral character. About the year 1669 he sailed from France for Canada.
His object probably was to accumulate a fortune by the barter of
European commodities for the furs and skins obtained by the Indians. He
pushed forward to the frontiers, established trading houses, and in the
well-freighted birch canoe, explored remote lakes and rivers.

At that time the whole of the great northwest of this country was an
entirely unknown land. No one knew whether the continent was one
thousand or ten thousand miles in breadth. It was the general
impression that the waves of the Pacific were dashing against the rocks
a few miles west of the chain of great lakes which fringed the southern
shores of Canada. La Salle was meditating an expedition up the St.
Lawrence, through the majestic chain of lakes to Lake Superior, from
the western end of which he confidently expected to find easy
communication with the Pacific Ocean. There he would again spread his
adventurous sail, having discovered a new route to China and the
Indies.

There was grandeur in this conception. It would entirely change the
thoroughfare of the world's commerce. It would make the French
possessions in the New World valuable beyond conception. This
all-important route, between Europe and Asia, would be under the
control of the French crown.

M. Frontenac, an ambitious and energetic Frenchman, was then
governor-general of Canada. He entered cordially into the plans of La
Salle, conferred frequently with him upon the subject, and was sanguine
in the expectation that, by this great discovery, his own name would be
immortalized, and he would secure the highest applause from the Grande
Monarque, Louis XIV.

As early as the year 1660, the Indians had reported, at Quebec, that
many leagues west of the great lakes there was a wonderful river, the
Great River, the Father of Waters, the most majestic stream in the
world, flowing from the unexplored solitudes of the wilderness in the
north, far away into the unknown regions of the south.

One day a birch canoe, with a little band of hardy, wayworn voyagers,
French and Indians, came paddling down the swift current of the St.
Lawrence and ran their boat upon the beach where the little cluster of
dwellings stood, called Quebec. They brought the startling intelligence
that Father Marquette, a great and good man whom all knew, h