The Indians of this village were the Natchez; and their chief was brother of the great chief, or Sun, of the whole nation.  His town was several leagues distant, near the site of the city of Natchez; and thither the French repaired to visit him.  They saw what they had already seen among the Taensas,—­a religious and political despotism, a privileged caste descended from the sun, a temple, and a sacred fire.  La Salle planted a large cross, with the arms of France attached, in the midst of the town; while the inhabitants looked on with a satisfaction which they would hardly have displayed, had they understood the meaning of the act....

And now they neared their journey’s end.  On the sixth of April, the river divided itself into three broad channels.  La Salle followed that of the west, and D’Autray that of the east; while Tonty took the middle passage.  As he drifted down the turbid current, between the low and marshy shores, the brackish water changed to brine, and the breeze grew fresh with the salt breath of the sea.  Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf opened on his sight, tossing its restless billows, limitless, voiceless, lonely as when born of chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life.

La Salle, in a canoe, coasted the marshy borders of the sea; and then the reunited parties assembled on a spot of dry ground, a short distance above the mouth of the river.  Here a column was made ready, bearing the arms of France, and inscribed with the words,—­“LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME 1682.” ...

On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous accession.  The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains,—­a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile.

[1] From “La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West.”  By permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co.  Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was born in Rouen, in France, in 1643, and assassinated in Texas in 1687.  He was of burgher descent, had been educated by the Jesuits, with whom for a time he was connected, and first went to Canada in 1666, discovering the Ohio River in 1669, and the upper waters of the Illinois in 1671.  In 1679 he established a fort on the Illinois River, near the present Peoria, intending it as a starting-point for an expedition down the Mississippi.  The expedition here described, organized in 1681, comprized, beside La Salle and Tonti, thirty Frenchmen and a band of Indians.  It reached the Mississippi by way of the Chicago portage and the Illinois River, and arrived at the mouth in 1682.  In 1684 La