obust meal, then pushing on to repeat the {290} experience
elsewhere, and you will have a good picture of Father Louis Hennepin, a
man whose books describing his travels, real or imaginary, had, in
their day, the widest popularity in Europe. Though he was an
unconscionable braggart, and though he had no scruples about falsifying
facts, yet, as the first person to publish an account of the Falls of
Niagara, and as the discoverer and namer of the Falls of St. Anthony,
he is fairly entitled to a place in a collection like this.

He was born in Belgium, about 1640, and in due time joined the
Franciscan monks. When he tells us that he was so passionately fond of
tales of adventure that he often skulked behind tavern-doors, though he
was sickened by the tobacco smoke, eagerly hanging on the words of the
old tars spinning yarns to each other, we do not wonder at finding him
on his way to the land of wonders, the New World, making the voyage in
company with La Salle. The wilderness, full of hardships and haunted
by treacherous savages though it was, had a fascination for him, and we
soon find him serving as an itinerant missionary on the frontier.

His experience in this work recommended him for appointment as
missionary at that loneliest of {291} outposts, La Salle's Fort
Frontenac. When La Salle returned successful from his efforts to
interest the court in his gigantic scheme of exploration, Father
Hennepin was selected to accompany him as the representative of the
Church. In preparation for the great undertaking, he was sent ahead
with La Motte, an officer in La Salle's service, to Fort Frontenac,
whence they proceeded in a small sailing vessel to Niagara River, under
orders to build a fort that was intended to be a link in the chain of
posts that La Salle purposed establishing.

Niagara Falls--"a vast and prodigious Cadence of Water," he calls
it--made a deep impression on the Father, and he proceeded to write in
his journal this description, which, when it was printed, was the first
published account of the cataract: "This wonderful Downfall is
compounded of two great Cross-streams of Water, and two Falls, with an
Isle sloping along the middle of it. The Waters which fall from this
vast height do foam and boil after the most hideous Manner imaginable,
making an outrageous Noise, more terrible than that of Thunder; for
when the wind blows from off the South, their dismal roaring may be
heard above fifteen Leagues of