distance by the northern shore drew the travel to that side of the Lake.

Wherever they went the French took prudent thought for the morrow. June 14, 1671, Saint-Lusson, who had been sent from Canada for that very purpose, standing amid a throng of savages and a cluster of Frenchmen, by a white cross and a cedar post bearing the royal arms, that had been raised at the foot of the Saut Rapids, holding a sword in one hand and a clod of earth in the other, with religious and civil ceremonies, took possession of the Saut, the Lakes Huron and Superior, with all the countries, rivers, lakes, and islands contiguous and adjacent thereto, both those already discovered and those yet to be discovered, bounded on the one side by the seas of the north and west, and on the other by the South Sea, in the name of the High, Mighty, and Redoubtable Monarch, Louis XIV., the Most Christian King of France and Navarre. All that "now remains of the sovereignty thus pompously proclaimed," says Mr. Parkman, is "now and then the accents of France on the lips of some straggling boatman or vagabond half-breed-this, and nothing more."

Meantime, the Jesuits, not cast down by the loss of the Huron Mission, were busy planting missions in the country beyond "Mer Douce."

The two most important of these missions, standing to the wilderness in some such relation as that of the early Christian monasteries of Western Europe to the surrounding heathenism, were those of Saut Sainte Marie and Saint-Esprit, the latter near the head of Lake Superior. The common rallying-points of Indians and Frenchmen alike, these missions became centres of real geographical information as well as of idle rumor and vague conjecture. Only a man who has brought his imagination to bear on the facts of wilderness life can conceive what was then going on. At any given time, some French discoverer might be paddling his canoe along

La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, 42-44.

some unknown river, or toiling through some unknown forest, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement or mission; and report of what he saw or did might be many months in finding its way to his countrymen. The yearly reports of the Jesuit missions, called "Relations," now that the Jesuits have become more secular and less spiritual, abound in natural knowledge,' which shows that the priests were grappling with the new questions that thronged upon the dullest minds, and that the brightest could not answer. Father Marquette had been stationed at Saint-Esprit, where he heard much of the mysterious river to find which had become the ambition of every ambitious Frenchman in New France.

La Salle came out to Canada at the age of twenty-three in 1666, burning with the great passion of the Age of Maritime Discovery-the thought of finding a western road to the riches of the East. Of all the men who shed lustre upon French discovery in New France, La Salle alone ranks beside Champlain. A band of Seneca Indians who wintered with him at his seigniory of La Chine, on the shore of Lake St. Louis, in one of the lulls of savage warfare, told him of a river called the Ohio that rose in their country and, at a distance of an eight moons' journey, emptied into the sea. Responding to that prepossession which leads men of ardent temper to interpret facts in the light of favorite theories and cherished purposes, he concluded that this river must flow to the Gulf of California. He had started with the Sulpitian priests on a journey to the Ohio, resolved to put this theory to the test, when by accident he met Joliet in the wilderness of Grand River. One of the questions that the little. company discussed was that of a road to the great river of which the French were now hearing so much, from tribes as distant as the Senecas and the Sioux. Joliet, who had become familiar with the reports that floated to the missions of the Upper Lakes, contended that the road should be sought in

1 Parkman: La Salle, 29.

the Northwest; La Salle, who was fresh from his conference with the Senecas, contended as earnestly for the Southwest. Joliet went on his way to Montreal. Galinée and Dollier, turned from their former purpose by his arguments, ascended the Strait of Detroit. La Salle, with his few followers, was left alone in the wilderness-alone, but not shaken in his purpose. Owing to the lack of original documents, and to the confusion of second-hand reports, the next two or three years of his life are wrapped in much obscurity, and are the subject of much vehement debate; but it is now generally held that in those years La Salle discovered the Ohio, descending it to the Falls at Louisville, perhaps even to the Mississippi. But this conclusion, while no doubt sound, is reached by cautious criticism of fragmentary documents. La Salle's discovery in no sense made the Ohio known to the world, and the region between the lake and the river remained to be explored as late as the year 1750. There is some evidence going to show that in this obscure passage of his life La Salle descended the Illinois to the Mississippi. But History has adjudged the honor of discovering the great river to others, and she is not likely to change her verdict.

Plainly, the time had come for the Mississippi to be discovered; and in 1672 Frontenac, the French governor, commissioned Joliet to make the discovery. At Mackinaw the intrepid explorer met the intrepid priest whose name will ever be associated with his own in Western annals. At the outset Marquette placed the enterprise under the patronage of the Immaculate Virgin, promising that if she granted them success the river should be named "The Conception." This pledge he strove to keep; but an Indian word, the very meaning of which has been disputed, is its designation. Ascending the Fox River, crossing the portage to the Wisconsin, one of the most remote from Canada of the many portages uniting the two systems of waters, and then descending the Wisconsin, on June 17, 1673, they found themselves, probably first of white men since De Soto's companions fled from the

midnight burial of their chief, on the bosom of the Father of Waters. We shall not follow them as they descend the mighty flood to a point below the mouth of the Arkansas. Having satisfied themselves that the river did not flow to the sea of Virginia or to the Gulf of California, but to the Gulf of Mexico, they turned back toward the north, and, by way of the Illinois River, the Chicago portage, and Lake Michigan, returned to Green Bay, having paddled their canoes, in four months, two thousand five hundred miles. Joliet lived many years to encounter new perils, among them a journey by the Saguenay to Hudson Bay; but Marquette, worn out by labors and vigils, soon after died on the lonely eastern shore of Lake Michigan.

La Salle's ambition became more ardent the longer it was fed by his glowing imagination. But the triumph of Joliet and Marquette changed the current of his thoughts.. Asia was no longer the vision that he saw in the west, but the Mississippi Valley. Spain had discovered the Mississippi, but had failed to take possession: he would fortify its mouth and hold the river against the world. England had planted her colonies on the Atlantic shore, claiming the whole continent behind them: he would gain their rear and shut the gateways of the West against them forever. In a word, he would change the seat of the French-American empire from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi. It was La Salle who first distinctly conceived the policy that led on to Fort Duquesne, Braddock's defeat, and Forbes's march to the Forks of the Ohio.

Early in the year 1679, he built, near the foot of Lake Erie, the Griffin, a vessel of sixty tons burden, to be used in the prosecution of his plans. Money was needed, and he must supply it by trading in furs. August 7th the Griffin spread her sails for the Northern waters. She was the first craft other than an Indian canoe or a boat propelled by oars that ever sailed our inland seas above Lake Ontario. On the 12th of that month she had reached the expansion of the Strait that

lies just above the city of Detroit. Unlike the Protestant explorers, the Catholic drew largely upon the Saints' calendar for geographical names; and the school-boy of to-day, as he pores over the map of North America, finds in the names of rivers, lakes, and capes valuable hints of early exploration. Of this we have an excellent example in the naming of Lake Sainte-Claire.

"The saint whose name was really bestowed, and whose day is August 12th, is the female Sainte Claire,' the foundress of the order of Franciscan nuns of the thirteenth century, known as 'Poor Claires.' Clara d'Assisi was the beautiful daughter of a nobleman of great wealth, who early dedicated herself to a religious life and went to St. Francis to ask for advice. On Palm Sunday she went to church with her family, dressed in rich attire, where St. Francis cut off her long hair with his own hands and threw over her the coarse penitential robes of the order. She entered the convent of San Damiano in spite of the opposition of her family and friends. It is related of her that on one occasion, when the Saracens came to ravage the convent, she arose from her bed, where she bd been long confined, and placing the pyx, which conta aed the host, upon the threshold, she knelt down and began to sing, whereupon the infidels threw down their arms and fied. Sancta Clara is a favorite saint all over Europe, and her fame in the New World ought not to be spoiled-like the record of the dead in a battle gazette-by a misspelt name.

“F. Way, in his work on Rome, published in 1875, says: 'Sancta Clara has her tomb at the Minerva, and she dwelt between the Pantheon and the Thermæ of Agrippa. The tenement she occupied at the time of her decease still exists, but is not well known. In a little triangular place on or near Via Tor. Argentina lodged the first convent of the Clarisses. If, crossing the gate-way, you turn to the left of the court, you will face two windows of a slightly raised ground-floor. It was there Innocent IV. visited her, and there, on August 12, 1253, listening to the reading of the Passion, in the midst of her weep