expedition to the west and
south, and was the first white man to gaze on the waters of the swift
Ohio. In 1679 he launched on the Great Lakes the first vessel that ever
spread its sails on those mighty inland seas, and in this vessel, the
Griffin, he sailed through Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan.

La Salle next descended the Illinois River, and built a fort where the
city of Peoria now stands. But his vessel was wrecked, and he was forced
to make his way on foot through a thousand miles of wilderness to obtain
supplies at Montreal. Such was the early record of this remarkable man,
and for two years afterward his life was full of adventure and
misfortune. At length, in 1682, he entered upon the great performance of
his life, his famous journey upon the bosom of the Father of Waters.

It was midwinter when La Salle and his men set out from the lakes with
their canoes. On the 4th of January, 1682, they reached the mouth of the
Chicago River, where its waters enter Lake Michigan. The river was
frozen hard, and they had to build sledges to drag their large and heavy
canoes down the ice-closed stream. Reaching the portage to the Illinois,
they continued their journey across the bleak and snowy waste,
toilsomely dragging canoes, baggage, and provisions to the other stream.
Here, too, they found a sheet of ice, and for some days longer trudged
down the channel of the silent and dreary stream. Its banks had been
desolated by Indian wars, and where once many flourishing villages rose
there were to be seen only ashes and smoke-blackened ruins.

About the 1st of February they reached Crevecoeur, the fort La Salle
had built some years earlier. Below this point the stream was free from
ice, and after a week's rest the canoes were launched on the liquid
surface. They were not long in reaching the point where the Illinois
buries its waters in the mighty main river, the grave of so many broad
and splendid streams.

Past the point they had now reached the Mississippi poured swiftly
downward, its waters swollen, and bearing upon them great sheets of ice,
the contribution of the distant north. It was no safe channel for their
frail birch-bark canoes, and they were obliged to wait a week till the
vast freightage of ice had run past. Then, on the 13th of February,
1682, they launched their canoes on the great stream, and began their
famous voyage down its mighty course.

A day's journey brought them to the place where the turbulent Mis