men returned exhausted, after fruitless wanderings and adventures with savage tribes. This vain journey added to the loss of his last vessel threw him into another dangerous illness. But on his recovery, still undaunted he determined to make another attempt to find his way back to Canada by the Mississippi and the Illinois to procure succour for the destitute colony. He set out again in April, 1686, with about twenty of his men fitted out in garments patched with much care, or borrowed from those who remained in the fort. They were obliged, however, to return without other result than the exploring of a magnificent country, and a visit, to a powerful and remarkable tribe of Indians, called the Cenis, long since extinct. La Salle's colonists, now reduced to forty-five, had grown heartsick and impatient of their long exile and imprisonment in the little palisaded village; and the only hope of deliverance lay in another attempt to procure aid from Canada. But again La Salle was prostrated by illness-doubtless the outcome of the many heart-breaks of his life. As soon as his strength was restored, however, he prepared once more to turn his steps northward. With about half of the survivors-some twenty-five men-La Salle for the last time left the fort, after a solemn, religious service, and a sad and affectionate farewell of the little party left behind. La Salle had long endured undaunted "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." One other, which released him from all, was in store for him. The career of heroic perseverance, which neither savage nature, nor illness, nor Indian barbarians, nor the persecution of bitter enemies had been able to turn aside, was to be prematurely cut short by a wretched quarrel among his own followers. In March, as he and his party were encamped in the northern part of Texas, a few of his men set out on a hunting expedition. A dispute arising about the division of the game, three of the men were murdered by the rest, who then saw no chance of safety from punishment except by the death of their brave leader. On March 19, 1637, La Salle, uneasy at the long absence of the hunters, set out in search of them. As he walked on with Friar Donay through the Texan wilderness, the spiritual world seemed to be uppermost in his thoughts. "All the way," wrote the friar, "he spoke to me of nothing but matters of piety, grace and predestination, enlarging on the debt he owed to God, who had saved him from so many perils during more than twenty years of travel in America." Suddenly he seemed overwhelmed by a profound and unaccountable sadness. Recovering from this his keen eye noticed two eagles circling in the air as if attracted by some carcass. He fired his gun as a signal to any of his men within hearing, and immediately after one of the conspirators appeared and answered his inquires with ostentatious insolence. La Salle rebuked him and unconsciously drew near an ambuscade from which a traitor called Duhaut, fired on him and the dauntless leader fell dead. Thus by the bullet of a treacherous assassin, was closed the tragic career of one of the most heroic spirits of a heroic age, who against all odds, had pursued for twenty years an object that seemed ever destined to elude him just as he was on the point of achieving success. The recital would seem almost too sad but for the light of heroic endurance that shines upon his story. The assassin Duhaut, by a righteous retribution soon after met a similar death. La Salle's companions at length succeeded in making their way to the faithful Tonti, who still occupied the rock of St. Louis on the Illinois. The brave and generous Tonti, as chivalrous as La Salle himself, full of grief for his leader, made an ineffectual attempt to rescue the wretched survivors of the colony on the Gulf of Mexico who eventually fell victims to a murdering band of Indians in the total absence of succour which the "Magnificent" Louis could so easily have afforded to those ill-fated victims of his ambition. Fort Frontenac figured repeatedly in the troublous times which were now hanging over New France, and was the scene of an infamous act of treachery by the Governor De Denonville, which provoked the terrible massacre of Lachine. La Salle fell in the midst of unfulfilled designs, but, where he had gone before, others were to follow and reap the result of his labors. Some twenty years later under happier auspices Le Moyne d'Iberville founded the present State of Louisiana, which still stands in its largely French character, a monument to the heroism and devotion of its first French explorers. CHAPTER VI. COUNT DE FRONTENAC. Frontenac the Most Conspicuous Figure in the History of New France-Of a Noble Basque F all the governors of New France, Louis de Buade, Count de Frontenac, stands out on the pages of history as the most conspicuous figure. He had a strangely mixed character; he was arrogant, over-bearing, tyrannical and yet possessed of such force, and energy, and wisdom that he did more than any other man during the time of French occupation in America to establish French rule on a firm basis. He came to Canada at a critical time in her history; a time when on the one hand a sparse population settled along the St. Lawrence was in danger of annihilation from the savage Indians of the Six Nations, and when the struggle which was ultimately to end in the conquest of Canada by the British was in its initial stages. He managed to avert the danger from the Iroquois and to postpone for many years the loss of New France. It was his striking and magnetic personality that enabled him to face the difficult situation he found in 451520 A |