[476] [Cf. Courcelles au lac Ontario, in Margry’s Découvertes et établissements des Français dans l’Amérique septentrionale, part i. p. 169; and Relation du Voyage de M. de Courcelles au lac Ontario, in Brodhead’s New York Colonial Documents, vol. ix. p. 75.—Ed.]
[477] Letter to Frontenac.
[478] [Given on a later page.—Ed.]
[479] Shea, Charlevoix, iii. 177; Parkman, Discovery of the Great West, p. 154.
[480] Mount Joliet is about sixty feet in height. The summit is two hundred and twenty-five feet wide, and thirteen hundred long. It is forty miles southwest of Chicago, in the vicinity of the city of Joliet, Illinois.
[481] Joliet, in his letter written on the map prepared for Frontenac, speaks of passing the years 1673 and 1674 in explorations of the Mississippi valley. [See this letter in fac-simile on a later page.—Ed.]
At the conclusion of his note to Frontenac, he alludes to the disaster which happened a quarter of an hour before his arrival at the point from which, in September, 1672, he had departed, in these words: “I had avoided perils from savages, I had passed forty-two rapids, and was about to land, with full joy at the success of so long and difficult an enterprise, when, after these dangers, my canoe upset. I lost two men and my box (cassette) in sight of, at the door of, the first French settlements which I had left almost two years before.”
Marquette conveys the impression that Joliet returned with him to Green Bay in September, 1673; but when, in a few weeks, he went back to the Illinois country between Chicago and Lake Peoria, he found several Frenchmen trading with the Indians, and among others mentions La Taupine, or Pierre Moreau, who in 1671 was with Joliet at Sault Ste. Marie. Near one of the upper tributaries of the Illinois on Joliet’s map appears Mont Joliet. May Joliet not have traded in this vicinity during the winter of 1673-1674, and may not Taupine and others have been his associates?
[482] [Cf. narrative in chapter vii. A plan of this fort is given on a later page.—Ed.]
[483] Margry, i. 329.