So La Salle had to go hundreds of miles back to Canada for more men, funds, and supplies, before he could venture to make the rest of the trip. After many months’ delay he started out again from Montreal.
There were now fifty-four in his party—twenty-three Frenchmen, eighteen braves, ten squaws to do the cooking, and three papooses. When they got back to Fort Breakheart, La Salle gave up building a ship, as he had decided to make the voyage down the Mississippi in canoes. There was plenty of game along the river, and in its muddy waters they caught catfish six feet long and weighing about two hundred pounds. They saw wild beans along the banks with stalks “as big as your arm,” reminding one of the tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” They had varied experiences with the different tribes of Indians—Chickasaw, Arkansas, Natchez—along their course, and found that the “man-eating monsters” described by the Illinois chief were only alligators. When at last they reached the mouth of the Father of Waters, there was no whirlpool to swallow them down; but the river calmly divided into three mouths, each leading into a broad expanse of salt water which, they learned, was not the Pacific Ocean but the Gulf of Mexico. On a hill near by, La Salle raised a wooden pillar on which he nailed the coat-of-arms bearing the lilies of France, and buried near it a leaden plate on which letters were engraved to tell future comers that the whole country drained by the Mississippi belonged to France.
At last, the patient worker and traveler had triumphed. He went back to Paris and reported all he had done in the name of his beloved king and country. Robert Cavelier de la Salle had done a greater thing than he realized. One hundred and twenty years later, Napoleon, Emperor of the French, sold to the United States the territory of Louisiana, claimed by La Salle, which is now half of the great republic. This was an achievement which meant more than the discovery of an outlet to China. Although a boat may be sailed through long rivers and short canals from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, this fact is hardly thought worthy of mention in these days. A far greater benefit to America and the whole world was achieved by Robert La Salle, because he enabled the French government to give to the United States her broad empire of the west.
LIVINGSTONE, THE WHITE MAN OF THE DARK CONTINENT
LITTLE Davie Livingstone was a queer, quiet Scotch laddie. His father was a high-minded man, but he was so poor that he had to take Davie out of the village school when he was ten. In those days, the early part of the nineteenth century, children began to work when they were very young. So Mr. Livingstone sent the lad to work, with other boys of his own age, as a piecer in a cotton mill. David worked from six in the morning till eight at night, stopping only for lunch.
With his first week’s wages the ten-year-old boy bought a Latin grammar. He was so eager to learn that he went to night school from eight to ten at night. He studied till midnight, and even later, when his mother did not take his books away and send him to bed. His great desire was to be a missionary. So he took up other languages besides Latin, and such studies as would fit him for missionary work. As soon as he was able, he went to London and