All the world knows what happened. Near Trinity River in
Texas some of his men mutinied. Early in the morning of the 19th of
March, 1687, La Salle left camp with a friar and Indian to ascertain what
was delaying the plotters, who had not returned from the hunt. Suddenly
La Salle seemed overwhelmed by a great sadness. He spoke of death. A
moment later, catching sight of one of the delinquents, he had called
out. A shot rang from the underbush; another shot; and La Salle reeled
forward dead, with a bullet wound gaping in his forehead. The body of
the man who had won a new empire for France was stripped and left naked,
a prey to the foxes and carrion birds. So perished Robert Cavelier de La
Salle, aged forty-four.

Nor need the fate of the mutineers be told here. The fate of mutineers
is the same the world over. Having slain their {142} commander, they
fell on one another and perished, either at one another's hands or among
the Indians. As for the colonists of men, women, and girls left in
Texas, the few who were not massacred by the Indians fell into the hands
of the Spaniards. La Salle's debts at the time of his death were what
would now be half a million dollars. His life had ended in what the
world calls ruin, but France entered into his heritage.

With the passing of Robert de La Salle passes the heroic age of
Canada,--its age of youth's dream. Now was to come its manhood,--its
struggles, its wars, its nation building, working out a greater destiny
than any dream of youth.

{143}

CHAPTER VIII

FROM 1679 TO 1713

Radisson quarrels with company--Up Labrador coast--Radisson captures
his rivals--Radisson ordered back to England--Death of Radisson--Jan
Pere the spy--The raid on Moose Factory--Sargeant besieged

Before leaving for France, Jean Talon, the Intendant, had set another
exploration in motion. English trade was now in full sway on Hudson
Bay. In possession of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Illinois, the
Great Lakes, France controlled all avenues of approach to the Great
Northwest except Hudson Bay. This she had lost through injustice to
Radisson; and already the troublesome question had come up,--What was
to be the boundary between the fur-trading domain of the French
northward from the St. Lawrence and the fur-trading domain of the
English southward from Hudson Bay. Fewer furs came down to Quebec from
Labrador, the King's Domain, from Kaministiquia (Fort William), the
stamping