How La Salle explored the country of the Illinois in company with his valiant friend, Henri de Tonty ’of the iron hand,’ and how these two heroic leaders traversed the continent to the very mouth of the Mississippi, is not to be told here.  But with its risks, its hardships, its tragedies, and its triumphs, this episode, which belongs to the period of Frontenac’s administration, will always remain a classic in the records of discovery.  The Jesuits, who did not love La Salle, were no less brave than he, and the lustre of his achievements must not be made to dim theirs.  Yet they had all the force of a mighty organization at their back, while La Salle, standing alone, braved ruin, obloquy, and death in order to win an empire for France.  Sometimes he may have thought of fame, but he possessed that driving power which goes straight for the object, even if it means sacrifice of self.  His haughtiness, his daring, his self-centred determination, well fitted him to be the friend and trusted agent of Frontenac.

Another leading figure of the period in western discovery was Daniel Greysolon du Lhut.  Duchesneau calls him the leader of the coureurs de bois.  There can be no doubt that he had reached this eminence among the French of the forest.  He was a gentleman by birth and a soldier by early training.  In many ways he resembled La Salle, for both stood high above the common coureurs de bois in station, as in talent.  Du Lhut has to his credit no single exploit which equals La Salle’s descent of the Mississippi, but in native sagacity he was the superior.  With a temperament less intense and experiences less tragic, he will never hold the place which La Salle securely occupies in the annals of adventure.  But few Frenchmen equalled him in knowledge of the wilderness, and none displayed greater force of character in dealing with the Indians.

What the mouth of the Mississippi was to La Salle the country of the Sioux became to Du Lhut—­a goal to be reached at all hazards.  Not only did he reach it, but the story of how he rescued Father Hennepin from the Sioux (1680) is among the liveliest tales to be found in the literature of the wilderness.  The only regrettable circumstance is that the story should have been told by Hennepin instead of by Du Lhut—­or rather, that we should not have also Du Lhut’s detailed version instead of the brief account which he has left.  Above all, Du Lhut made himself the guardian of French interests at Michilimackinac, the chief French post of the Far West—­the rendezvous of more tribes than came together at any other point.  The finest tale of his courage and good judgment belongs to the period of La Barre’s government—­when, in 1684, at the head of forty-two French, he executed sentence of death on an Indian convicted of murder.  Four hundred savages, who had assembled in mutinous mood, witnessed this act of summary justice.  But they respected Du Lhut for the manner in which he had conducted the trial, and admired the firmness with which he executed a fair sentence.