[VI.]
TO-DAY.
It is recorded that the Abbé Cavelier and his party arrived safely in France, and that he then concealed the death of La Salle for awhile that he might get possession of property which would have been seized by La Salle’s creditors. He died “rich and very old” says the historian,[26] though he was unsuccessful in a petition which he made with his nephew to the king, to have all the explorer’s seigniorial propriety in America put in his possession. Like Father Hennepin—who returned to France and wrote his entertaining book to prove himself a greater man than La Salle—the Abbé Cavelier was skilful in turning loss to profit.
It is also recorded that Henri de Tonty, at his own expense, made a long search with men, canoes, and provisions, for La Salle’s Texan colony—left by the king to perish at the hands of Indians; that he was deserted by every follower except his Indian and one Frenchman, and nearly died in swamps and canebrakes before he again reached the fort on the Illinois.
To-day you may climb the Rock of St. Louis,—called now Starved Rock from the last stand which the Illinois made as a tribe on that fortress, a hundred years ago, when the Iroquois surrounded and starved them,—and you may look over the valley from which Tonty heard the death lament arise.
A later civilization has cleared it of Indian lodges and set it with villages and homesteads. A low ridge of the old earthwork yet remains on the east verge. Behind the Rock, slopes of milk-white sand still stretch toward a shallow ravine. Beyond that stands a farmhouse full of the relics of French days. The iron-handed commandant of the Rock has left some hint of his strong spirit thereabouts, for even the farmer’s boy will speak his name with the respect boys have for heroic men.
Crosses, beads, old iron implements, and countless remains of La Salle’s time, turn up everywhere in the valley soil.
Ferns spring, lush and vivid, from the lichened lips of that great sandstone body. The stunted cedars lean over its edge still singing the music of the sea. Sunshine and shade and nearness to the sky are yet there. You see depressions in the soil like grass-healed wounds, made by the tearing out of huge trees; but local tradition tells you these are the remains of pits dug down to the rock by Frenchmen searching for Tonty’s money. At the same time, local tradition is positive that Tonty came back, poor, to the Rock to die, in 1718.
Death had stripped him of every tie. He had helped to build that city near the Mississippi’s mouth which was La Salle’s object, and had also helped found Mobile. The great west owes more to him than to any other man who labored to open it to the world. Yet historians say the date of his death is unknown, and tradition around the Rock says he crept up the stony path an old and broken man, helped by his Indian and a priest, died gazing from its summit, and was buried at its west side. The tribes, while they held the land, continued to cover his grave with wild roses. But men may tread over him now, for he lies lost in the earth as La Salle was lost in the wilderness of the south.