the Gulf, and,
most of all, the bitter enmity of the French in Canada? The scheme
meant disaster to their interests, by turning a large part of their
trade into another channel and setting up on the Mississippi a new and
powerful rival of Canada, with La Salle at its head.

All commercial Canada and nearly all official Canada were already
incensed against him on the mere suspicion of his purposes. If they
saw {250} these taking actual form, would they not rage and move heaven
and earth, that is to say, Louis the Great,[2] to crush them? A man of
less than La Salle's superhuman audacity would not in his wildest
moments have dreamed of such a thing. He deliberately cherished the
scheme and set himself calmly to executing it.

On December 21, 1682, the expedition started from Fort Miami. It
consisted of twenty-three white men, eighteen Indian warriors, and ten
squaws, with three children. These New England savages had made a
bloody record in their own country, knew well how to use guns, and were
better adapted to the work in hand than raw Europeans, however brave,
who had no experience of Indian warfare.

On February 6 the voyagers saw before them the broad current of the
Mississippi, full of floating ice. For a long distance they paddled
their canoes down the mighty current without adventure. As they fared
on day by day, they realized that they were entering a summer land.
The warm air and hazy sunlight and opening flowers were in delightful
contrast with the ice and snow from which they had emerged. Once {251}
there seemed to be danger of an attack from Indians whose war-drum they
could hear beating. A fog lifted, and the Indians, looking across the
river, saw the Frenchmen at work building a fort. Peace signals were
displayed from both sides, and soon the white men and their Indian
allies from rugged New England were hobnobbing in the friendliest way
with these dusky denizens of the southwestern woods. These were a band
of the Arkansas, the same people who had treated Joliet and Marquette
so handsomely. They lavished every kind attention on their guests and
kept them three days. The friar, Membre, who chronicled the
expedition, describes them as "gay, civil, and free-hearted,
exceedingly well-formed and with all so modest that not one of them
would take the liberty to enter our hut, but all stood quietly at the
door." He adds, "we did not lose the value of a pin while we were
among them."

La Salle