[4] Although La Salle and Don Diego de Peñalosa (1624-1687) presented to the French government independent plans for an expedition against the Spaniards and Peñalosa afterwards proposed their co-operation, there is no substantial evidence that this project was adopted. Parkman is of the opinion that La Salle proposed his expedition against the Spaniards in the hope that the conclusion of peace between France and Spain would prevent its execution and that he might then use the aid he had thus received in establishing a fortified commercial colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. See E. T. Miller, “The Connection of Peñalosa with the La Salle Expedition,” in the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. v. (Austin, Tex., 1902).
LA SALLE, ST JEAN BAPTISTE DE (1651-1719), founder of the order of Christian Brothers, was born at Reims. The son of a rich lawyer, his father’s influence early secured him a canonry in the cathedral; there he established a school, where free elementary instruction was given to poor children. The enterprise soon broadened in scope; a band of enthusiastic assistants gathered round him; he resolved to resign his canonry, and devote himself entirely to education. His assistants were organized into a community, which gradually rooted itself all over France; and a training-school for teachers, the Collège de Saint-Yon, was set up at Rouen. In 1725, six years after the founder’s death, the society was recognized by the pope, under the official title of “Brothers of the Christian Schools”; its members took the usual monastic vows, but did not aspire to the priesthood. During the first hundred years of its existence its activities were mainly confined to France; during the 19th century it spread to most of the countries of western Europe, and has been markedly successful in the United States. When La Salle was canonized in 1900, the total number of brothers was estimated at 15,000. Although the order has been chiefly concerned with elementary schools, it undertakes most branches of secondary and technical education; and it has served as a model for other societies, in Ireland and elsewhere, slightly differing in character from the original institute.
LA SALLE, a city of La Salle county, Illinois, U.S.A., on the Illinois river, near the head of navigation, 99 m. S.W. of Chicago. Pop. (1900) 10,446, of whom 3471 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 11,537. The city is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the Illinois Central railways, and by the Illinois & Michigan Canal, of which La Salle is the western terminus. The city has a public library. The principal industries are the smelting of zinc and the manufacture of cement, rolled zinc, bricks, sulphuric acid and clocks; in 1905 the city’s factory products were valued at $3,158,173. In the vicinity large quantities of coal are mined, for which the city is an important shipping point. The municipality owns and operates the waterworks and the electric lighting plant. The first settlement was made here in 1830; and the place which was named in honour of the explorer, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was chartered as a city in 1852 and rechartered in 1876.
LASAULX, ARNOLD CONSTANTIN PETER FRANZ VON (1839-1886), German mineralogist and petrographer, was born at Castellaun near Coblenz on the 14th of June 1839. He was educated at Berlin, where he took his Ph. D. in 1868. In 1875 he became professor of mineralogy at Breslau, and in 1880 professor of mineralogy and geology at Bonn. He was distinguished for his researches on minerals and on crystallography, and he was one of the earlier workers on microscopic petrography. He described in 1878 the eruptive rocks of the district of Saar and Moselle. In 1880 he edited Der Aetna from the MSS. of Dr W. Sartorius von Waltershausen, the results of observations made between the years 1834-1869. He was author of Elemente der Petrographie (1875), Einführung in die Gesteinslehre (1885), and Précis de pétrographie (1887). He died at Bonn on the 25th of January 1886.
LASCAR, the name in common use for all oriental, and especially Indian, sailors, which has been adopted in England into the Merchant Shipping Acts, though without any definition. It is derived from the Persian lashkar = army, or camp, in which sense it is still used in India, e.g. Lashkar, originally the camp, now the permanent capital, of Sindhia at Gwalior. It would seem to have been applied by the Portuguese, first to an inferior class of men in military service (cf. “gun-lascars”), and then to sailors as early as the 17th century. The form askari on the east coast of Africa, equivalent to “sepoy,” comes from the Arabic ‘askar = army, which is believed to be itself taken from the Persian.