The canoes were still on the water, while quite a throng of the Indians
crowded the shore. With the customary religious ceremonies, the body
was conveyed to the chapel. It remained there for a day, covered with a
pall. On the morning of the next day, which was the ninth of June, the
remains were deposited in a grave, in the middle of the log chapel,
which we infer had no floor but the earth; there to repose until the
trump of the archangel shall sound, when all who are in their graves
shall come forth.

CHAPTER IV.

_Life upon the St. Lawrence and the Lakes Two Hundred Years Ago._

Birth of La Salle. His Parentage and Education. Emigrates to America.
Enterprising Spirit. Grandeur of his Conceptions. Visits the Court of
France. Preparations for an Exploring Voyage. Adventures of the River
and Lake. Awful Scene of Indian Torture. Traffic with the Indians. The
Ship-yard at Lake Erie.

About two hundred years ago, a young man, by the name of Robert de la
Salle, crossed the Atlantic to seek his fortune in the wilds of Canada.
He was born on the 22d of November, 1643, in the city of Rouen, the
ancient capital of Normandy,[1] France. He was the child of one of the
most distinguished families, and enjoyed all the advantages of social
and educational culture which the refinement and scholarship of those
times could confer. He was by nature a thoughtful, pensive young man,
whose soul was profoundly moved by the unsearchable mystery of this our
earthly being. In very early life he found, in the religion of Jesus, a
partial solution of the sublime drama of conflict, sin, and sorrow
which is being enacted on this globe, and which has no solution
whatever but in the revelations of the Bible.

[1] De La Salle among the Senecas, in 1669. By O. H. Marshall,
Buffalo Historical Society.

Born almost beneath the shadow of the great cathedral of Rouen, and of
an ancestry which from time immemorial had been the children of the
Catholic Church, and instructed from infancy by revered ecclesiastics
of that communion he almost as a matter of necessity accepted
Christianity as presented to him in the ritual of the Church of Rome.
Nature had endowed him with a restless, enterprising spirit, which led
him eagerly to plunge into those wild and perilous adventures from
which most persons would have turned with dismay.

La Salle received an accomplished education in one of the best
seminaries in Europe. Upon graduating,