ILLUSTRATIONS.
Historical Introduction.
La Salle’s Two Previous Voyages.
The earliest French explorers of the seventeenth century, among the great lakes and rivers of the North American continent,—Champlain, Nicolet, Marquette, Hennepin, Joliet and La Salle—were men of no common mould. Whether clerics, imbued with the enthusiasm of their holy faith, or laymen, dominated by the love of adventure and the prospect of adding to the wealth and glory of their beloved France, their ideals were sublime, their labors prodigious, their sufferings heroic, their perseverance indomitable. They possessed “the courage of their convictions;” and despite the difficulties, dangers, and reverses which befell them, their successive explorations all contributed to the result finally achieved by La Salle,—the discovery of the “Father of Waters”—the Mississippi.
“Second only to Champlain, among the heroes of Canadian history,” says John Fiske,[1] “stands Robert Cavelier de la Salle—a man of iron, if ever there was one—a man austere and cold in manner, and endowed with such indomitable pluck and perseverance as have never been surpassed in the world. He did more than any other man to extend the dominion of France in the New World. As Champlain had founded the colony of Canada, and opened the way to the great lakes, so La Salle completed the discovery of the Mississippi, and added to the French possessions the vast province of Louisiana.”
René Robert Cavelier, better known as La Salle, from the name of the family’s estate, was born, in 1643, at Rouen, Normandy, France. The Caveliers, though not ennobled, were citizens of marked social and some official distinction in that ancient and wealthy city. His father, Jean, and his uncle Henri, were rich merchants, and the latter, at least, was one of the “Hundred Associates” of Cardinal Richelieu, a syndicate largely interested in trade with the territorial possessions of France, in America.[2] Being an earnest Catholic, Robert, at an early age, became connected with the Jesuits, and in their schools acquired an excellent education, especially in the higher mathematics and the exact sciences. His nature, however, was one which chafed under the restrictions of a monastic order; and he subsequently withdrew from them, though on good terms, and with a reputation as a bright scholar, and of unimpeachable morals. Free to seek a wider field for his activities than that offered by an ecclesiastical career, his attention was drawn to Canada, where an elder brother, John Cavelier, a priest of the Sulpitian order, was then residing. But, as his connection with and withdrawal from the Jesuit order had—under a recent French law—deprived him of any claim upon the estate of his recently deceased father, he lacked the means needed for the voyage thither. Finally, he obtained an allowance (probably from his family) of 300 or 400 livres, with which slender sum he sailed to seek his fortune, in the spring of 1666.