heart than the exploration of this country, through which, to all
appearances, a way may be found to Mexico...."

[Footnote 12: Later called Fort Frontenac, and the site of the present
city of Kingston.]

To La Salle the commission was full of promise, for his ardent mind
was filled with bold designs. He foresaw a time when French
enterprise, leaving the rugged civilisation on the banks of the St.
Lawrence, would seize upon the rich valley of the Mississippi; a
fortified post at the mouth of the Father of Waters would hold the
interior of the continent against the Spaniards; and the peltries and
buffalo hides of the great West would fill his forts with gold. With
Henri de Tonty, La Motte de Lussiere, Father Hennepin, and thirty men,
La Salle hastened to Quebec in the summer of 1678, and without loss of
time he organised his first expedition to the distant Mississippi.

The story of that enterprise is a tale of disaster which has few
parallels in history. A perilous passage over Lake Ontario in a
ten-ton vessel brought them to Niagara. Above the falls they built
_The Griffin_, a schooner of forty-five tons, to carry the necessities
of the Mississippi settlement westward by way of the Great Lakes. This
vessel was lost by some obscure calamity, and the conjecture is that
she foundered in Lake Michigan. La Salle now found himself at the head
of a mutinous company stranded at Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois,
facing a winter with practically no provisions. Six of his men
deserted, and on two occasions treachery all but deprived him of his
life.

In the circumstances La Salle saw only one possible course before him:
to return to Fort Frontenac for fresh supplies and material for
further progress. Leaving Tonty his trusted lieutenant in charge of
Fort Crevecoeur, he set out with an Indian guide and four Frenchmen.
The hardships and disasters of the journey deprived him of his
companions, one by one, but he pressed on alone. "During sixty-five
days he had toiled almost incessantly, travelling about a thousand
miles through a country beset with every form of peril and
obstruction.... In him an unconquerable mind held at its service a
frame of iron, and taxed it to its utmost endurance. The pioneer of
Western pioneers was no rude son of toil, but a man of thought,
trained amid arts and letters."[13]

This first chapter of his reverses, however, was not yet completed;
for even while La Salle was getting succour for his compan