lantic, thus discovering the
mouths of a stream which has been a great source of wealth to our
enterprising neighbours. In two years he turned his steps to Quebec,
and going home to France was appointed Governor of the territory he had
discovered. He was the first Governor of Louisiana, a territory ceded
by Napoleon I. to the United States, in 1803. The unlucky Governor was
not destined to reach his government. La Salle, in command of four
ships, with settlers, sailed from Rochelle, on the 24th of July, 1689.
He was ignorant of the exact geographical situation of the mouths of
the Mississippi, but passing through the Antilles, reached Florida,
where he was murdered by his own people--a melancholy and lamentable
fate for one of whom all Frenchmen may justly boast. Canada now
numbered 8,000 souls, including converted Indians; and French America
extended from Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia through the St. Lawrence
and the great lakes to the Pacific, and from the great lakes again to
the ocean through the Mississippi, all the westward of even that stream
being French soil. Yet it was only nominally so. The Indians were
virtually the owners of the soil, those spots on which forts or trading
posts had been erected or established, only excepted.

[2] The able American Historian, Jared Sparks, in a letter to a
friend at Quebec, speaking of the early missions in Canada,
says;--"For heroic struggles and great sacrifices, the world
affords few examples to be compared with those of the early
Missionaries in Canada."

M. De La Barre now (1682) succeeded Frontenac as Viceroy. The new
Governor was of a restless and overbearing disposition. He required, or
supposed that he required, a strong government. He certainly needed an
able one. The idea of drawing off the trade of the St. Lawrence had
first occurred to the English colonists on the Hudson. The Iroquois
preferred trading with the "down south" English to trading with the
French. Their furs were chiefly carried down the Hudson, to the no
small annoyance of the French exporter. De La Barre had no idea of
tolerating such a mode of doing business. The furs of Canada were
French furs. The Indians were merely hunters for the French, and had no
right whatever to dispose of their goods in the dearest market, and buy
their necessaries in the cheapest market. De La Barre, weakened though
he was in the number of his troops, many men having converted their
sword