the Indies, and upon learning the news that MM.  Dollier de Casson and Gallinee were going to christianize the wild tribes of south-western Canada, he hastened to rejoin the two devoted missionaries.  They set out in the summer of 1669, with twenty-two Frenchmen.  Arriving at Niagara, La Salle suddenly changed his mind, and abandoned his travelling companions, under the pretext of illness.  No more was needed for the Frenchman, ne malin,[7] to fix upon the seigniory of the future discoverer of the mouth of the Mississippi the name of Lachine; M. Dollier de Casson is suspected of being the author of this gentle irony.

Eight years later the explorations of Joliet and Father Marquette revived his instincts as a discoverer; he betook himself to France in 1677 and easily obtained authority to pursue, at his own expense, the discovery already begun.  Back in Canada the following year, La Salle thoroughly prepared for this expedition, accumulating provisions at Fort Niagara, and visiting the Indian tribes.  In 1679, accompanied by the Chevalier de Tonti, he set out at the head of a small troop, and passed through Michilimackinac, then through the Baie des Puants.  From there he reached the Miami River, where he erected a small fort, ascended the Illinois, and, reaching a camp of the Illinois Indians, made an alliance with this tribe, obtaining from them permission to erect upon their soil a fort which he called Crevecoeur.  He left M. de Tonti there with a few men and two Recollet missionaries, Fathers de la Ribourde and Membre, and set out again with all haste for Fort Frontenac, for he was very anxious regarding the condition of his own affairs.  He had reason to be.  “His creditors,” says the Abbe Ferland, “had had his goods seized after his departure from Fort Frontenac; his brigantine Le Griffon had been lost, with furs valued at thirty thousand francs; his employees had appropriated his goods; a ship which was bringing him from France a cargo valued at twenty-two thousand francs had been wrecked on the Islands of St. Pierre; some canoes laden with merchandise had been dashed to pieces on the journey between Montreal and Frontenac; the men whom he had brought from France had fled to New York, taking a portion of his goods, and already a conspiracy was on foot to disaffect the Canadians in his service.  In one word, according to him, the whole of Canada had conspired against his enterprise, and the Count de Frontenac was the only one who consented to support him in the midst of his misfortunes.”  His remarkable energy and activity remedied this host of evils, and he set out again for Fort Crevecoeur.  To cap the climax of his misfortunes, he found it abandoned; being attacked by the Iroquois, whom the English had aroused against them, Tonti and his comrades had been forced to hasty flight.  De la Salle found them again at Michilimackinac, but he had the sorrow of learning of the loss of Father de la Ribourde, whom the Illinois had massacred.  Tonti and his