It was at about this time there appeared upon the scene another of those picturesque and formidable figures, in which this period of American history so abounds—­Robert Cavalier La Salle.  La Salle was at that time only twenty years of age.  He had reached Canada four years earlier and had devoted himself for three years to the study of the Indian languages, in order to fit himself for the career of western exploration which he contemplated.  One day he was visited by a party of Senecas, who told him of a river, which they called the Ohio, so great that many months were required to traverse it.  From their description, La Salle concluded that it must fall into the Gulf of California, and so form the long-sought passage to China.  He determined to explore it, and after surmounting innumerable obstacles, actually did reach it, and descend it as far as the spot where the city of Louisville now stands, afterwards exploring the Illinois and the country south of the Great lakes, as well as the lakes themselves.

Fired by La Salle’s report of his discoveries, two other Frenchmen, Louis Joliet, a native of Quebec, who had already led an expedition in search of the copper mines of Lake Superior, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest and accomplished linguist, started on a still greater journey.  With five companions and two birchbark canoes, they headed down the Wisconsin river, and on June 17, 1673, glided out upon the blue waters of the Mississippi.  A fortnight later, they reached a little village called Peoria, where the Indians received them well, and continuing down the river, passed the Missouri, the Ohio, and finally, having gone far enough to convince themselves that the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the Gulf of California, they turned about and reached Green Bay again in September, having paddled more than 2,500 miles.  Marquette, shattered in health, remained at Green Bay, while Joliet pushed on to Montreal to tell of his discoveries.  Marquette rallied sufficiently at the end of a year to attempt a mission among the Illinois Indians, where death found him in the spring of 1675.  Joliet spent his last years in a vain endeavor to persuade the government of France to undertake on a grand scale the development of the rich lands along the Mississippi.

But the story which Joliet took back with him to Quebec fired anew the ambition of La Salle.  He conceived New France as a great empire in the wilderness, and he determined to descend the mighty river to its mouth and establish a city there which would hold the river for France against all comers.  Such occupation would, according to French doctrine, give France an indisputable right to the whole territory which the river and its tributaries drained, and La Salle’s plan was to establish a chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie to the Gulf, to build up around these great cities, and so to lay the foundations for the mightiest empire in history.  We may well stand amazed before a plan so ambitious, and before the determination with which this great Frenchman set about its accomplishment.