PART OF RAUDIN’S MAP.
Harrisse says: “This is the only map in which the name Bazire is given to the Arkansas River. Bazire was a merchant of Canada who in 1673 supported Frontenac in his design of building Fort Frontenac, with which Raudin had also a great deal to do.” This follows the Barlow original. There is in the Parkman Collection a copy of a part of it by Harrisse.
There was not a little in all this to point to a state of mental unsoundness in La Salle. At a late day Joutel, a fellow-townsman of La Salle, destined to become the expedition’s historian, joined the fleet at Rochelle, and on the 24th of July (1684) it sailed, only to put back, four days later, to repair a broken bowsprit of the “Joly.” Once again they put to sea.
LA SALLE’S CAMP.
This is a reduced sketch from a copy in the Barlow collection of a Plan de l’entrée du lac ou l’on a laissé Monr de la Salle, which is preserved in the Archives of the Marine. It is Harrisse’s no. 226. The key is as follows: 1. Le camp de M. de la Salle. 2. Endroit ou la flutte c’est perdue. 3. La frigatte la “Belle” mouillée. 4 and 5. Cabannes des sauvages.
Everything still went wrong. The leaders chafed and quarrelled as on land.[634] The Spaniards captured their smallest vessel.[635] At Santo Domingo the Governor of the island and his officers joined in the quarrel on the side of La Salle, who now fell prostrate with disease. When he recovered he set sail again with his three remaining ships on the 25th of November, coasted the southern shore of Cuba, and on New Year’s Day (1685) sighted land somewhere near the River Sabine. He supposed himself east of the Mississippi mouths, when in fact he was far to the west of them. He knew their latitude, for he had taken the sun when there on his canoe voyage in 1682; but he had at that time no means of ascertaining their longitude. The “Joly” next disappeared in a fog, and La Salle waited for her four or five days, but in vain. So he sailed on farther till he found the coast trending southerly, when he turned, and shortly after met the “Joly.” Passages of crimination and recrimination between the leaders of course followed.[636] La Salle all the while was trying to make out that the numerous lagoons along the coast were somehow connected with the mouths of the Mississippi, while Beaujeu, vexed at the confusion and indecision of La Salle’s mind, did little to make matters clearer. They were in reality at Matagorda Bay. Trying to make an anchorage within, one of the vessels struck a reef and became a total wreck, and only a small part of her cargo was saved.[637] La Salle suspected it was done to embarrass him; and landing his men, he barricaded himself on the unhealthy ground, amid a confusion of camp equipage, including what was saved from the wreck. A swarm of squalid savages looked on, and saw a half-dozen of the Frenchmen buried daily. The Indians contrived to pilfer some blankets, and when a force was sent to punish them they killed several of the French. Beaujeu offered some good advice, but La Salle rejected it; and finally, on the 12th of March the “Joly” sailed, and La Salle was left with his forlorn colony.[638] Beaujeu steered, as he thought, for the Baye du St. Esprit (Mobile Bay [?]); but his belief that he was leaving the mouths of the Mississippi made him miss that harbor, and after various adventures he bore away for France, and reached Rochelle about the 1st of July. With him returned the engineer, Minet, who made on the voyage a map of the mouths of the Mississippi doubly interpreted,—one sketch being based on the Franquelin map of 1684, as La Salle had found it in 1682; and the other conformed to their recent observations about Matagorda, into whose lagoons he made this great river discharge.[639]
CARTE DE LA LOUISIANE, BY MINET, 1685.