side, with guns cocked. One missed Monsieur de la Salle. The one
firing at the same time shot him in the head. He died an hour
after, on the 19th of March 1687.

"I expected the same fate. But this danger did not occupy my
thoughts, penetrated with grief at so cruel a spectacle. I saw him
fall, a step from me, his face all full of blood. He had confessed
and performed his devotions just before we started. During his last
moments he manifested the spirit of a good Christian, especially in
the act of pardoning his murderers.

"Thus died our wise commander, constant in adversity, intrepid,
generous, engaging, dexterous, skilful, capable of everything. He,
who for twenty years had softened the fierce temper of countless
savage tribes, was massacred by the hands of his own domestics,
whom he had loaded with caresses. He died in the prime of life, in
the midst of his enterprises, without having seen their success. I
could not leave the spot where he had expired, without having
buried him as well as I could. After which I raised a cross over
his grave."

In reference to the burial, Joutel gives a little different account. He
says: "The shot which killed La Salle was the signal for the
accomplices of the assassin to rush to the spot. With barbarous cruelty
they stripped him of his clothing, even to his shirt. The poor dead
body was treated with every indignity. The corpse was left, entirely
naked, to the voracity of wild beasts."

Both of these accounts may be essentially true. The barbarities
practised by the assassins may have preceded or followed the hasty
burial of Douay. Father Douay, in his account, continues:

"Occupied with these thoughts, which La Salle had a thousand times
suggested to us, while relating the events of the new discoveries,
I unceasingly adored the inscrutable designs of God in this conduct
of His Providence, uncertain still what fate He reserved for us, as
our desperadoes plotted nothing less than our destruction. We at
last entered the place where Monsieur Cavalier was. The assassins
entered the cabin unceremoniously, and seized all that was there. I
had arrived a moment before them. I had no need to speak; for as
soon as Cavalier beheld my countenance, all bathed in tears, he
exclaimed aloud:

"'Ah, my poor brother is dead.'

"This holy ecclesiastic, whose virtue has been so oft