est, which he believed, in common with others, might lead to the
Gulf of California. In the summer of 1669 he accompanied two Sulpician
priests, of Montreal, Dollier de Casson and Gallinee, on an expedition
they made, under the authority of Governor Courcelles, to the extreme
western end of Ontario, where he met Jolliet, apparently for the first
time, and probably had many conversations {184} with him respecting the
west and south, and their unknown rivers. He decided to leave the
party and attempt an exploration by a southerly route, while the
priests went on to the upper lakes as far as the Sault. Of La Salle's
movements for the next two years we are largely in the dark--in some
respects entirely so. It has been claimed by some that he first
discovered the Ohio, and even reached the Mississippi, but so careful
an historian as Justin Winsor agrees with Shea's conclusion that La
Salle "reached the Illinois or some other affluent of the Mississippi,
but made no report and made no claim, having failed to reach the great
river." It was on his return from these mysterious wanderings, that
his seigniory is said to have received the name of La Chine as a
derisive comment on his failure to find a road to China. In the course
of years the name was very commonly given, not only to the lake but to
the rapids of St. Louis.

[Illustration: Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle]

We now come to sure ground when we follow La Salle's later
explorations, on which his fame entirely rests. Frontenac entered
heartily into his plans of following the Mississippi to its mouth, and
setting at rest the doubts that existed as to its course. He received
from the King a grant of Fort Frontenac and its surrounding lands as a
seigniory. This fort had been built by the governor in 1673 at
Cataraqui, now Kingston, as an advanced trading and defensive post on
Lake Ontario. La Salle considered it a most advantageous position for
carrying on his ambitious projects of exploration. He visited France
in 1677 and received from the King letters-patent {186} authorising him
to build forts south and west in that region "through which it would
seem a passage to Mexico can be discovered." On his return to Canada
he was accompanied by a Recollet friar, Father Louis Hennepin, and by
Henry de Tonty, the son of an Italian resident of Paris, both of whom
have associated their names with western exploration. Of all his
friends and followers, Tonty, who