came to a village where lived the Miamis and the Kickapoos.  These Indians tried to dissuade them from going on; but Marquette was resolute, and on the 10th of June, 1673, he led his followers over the swamps and marshes that separated Fox River from a river which the Indian guides assured him flowed into the Mississippi.  This westward-flowing river he called the Wisconsin, and there the guides left him, as he says, “alone, amid that unknown country, in the hands of God.”

The little band shoved their canoes boldly out upon the river, and for seven days floated slowly downward into the unknown.  At last, on the 17th of June, they paddled out on the bosom of the Mississippi, and, turning their canoes to the south, followed the bends and twists of the river, past the mouth of the Missouri, past the Ohio, to a point not far from the mouth of the Arkansas.  There the voyage ended, and the party went slowly back to the Lakes.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Read Parkman’s La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West.]

%56.  La Salle finishes the Work of Marquette and Joliet.%—­The discovery of Marquette and Joliet was the greatest of the age.  Yet five years went by before Robert de la Salle (lah sahl’) set forth with authority from the French King “to labor at the discovery of the western part of New France,” and began the attempt to follow the river to the sea.  In 1678 La Salle and his companions left Canada, and made their way to the shore of Lake Erie, where during the winter they built and launched the Griffin, the first ship that ever floated on those waters.  In this they sailed to the mouth of Green Bay, and from there pushed on to the Illinois River, to an Indian camp not far from the site of Peoria, Ill.  Just below this camp La Salle built Fort Crevecoeur (cra’v-ker, a word meaning heart-break, vexation).

[Illustration:  %FRENCH CLAIMS% MISSIONS AND TRADING POSTS IN MISSISSIPPI VALLEY %in 1700%]

Leaving the party there in charge of Henri de Tonty to construct another ship, he with five companions went back to Canada.  On his return he found that Fort Crevecoeur was in ruins, and that Tonty and the few men who had been faithful were gone, he knew not where.  In the hope of meeting them he pushed on down the Illinois to the Mississippi.  To go on would have been easy, but he turned back to find Tonty, and passed the winter on the St. Joseph River.

From there in November, 1681, he once more set forth, crossed the lake to the place where Chicago now is, went up the Chicago River and over the portage to the Illinois, and early in February floated out on the Mississippi.  It was, on that day, a surging torrent full of trees and floating ice; but the explorers kept on their way and came at last to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.  There La Salle took formal possession of all the regions drained by the Mississippi, the Ohio, and their tributaries, claiming them in the name of France, and naming the country thus claimed “Louisiana.”  The iron will, the splendid courage, of La Salle had triumphed over every obstacle and made him one of the grandest characters in history.