Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/151

 A little later, Marquette went as a missionary to northern Illinois; and after converting many of the Indians about Chicago to the faith, he started for north-eastern Michigan, intending to found a mission there. Having set up an altar on the little river bearing his name, he asked his guides to leave him alone for a short time, and when they returned to seek him, he was found dead. He was buried in the sand near the town called after him, and is still revered by the natives and settlers of the Lake districts, many of whom are said to invoke the aid of St. Marquette when in danger in their frail canoes.

While Marquette's career was thus cut short before he had even begun the realization of his dream of ascending the Missouri, the work he had commenced on the Mississippi was carried on by a man of a very different character. On his way back to Quebec, from his trip with Marquette, Joliet became acquainted with Robert Cavalier de la Salle, Governor of Frontenac, now Kingston, a French outpost on Lake Ontario, who had already made himself thoroughly acquainted with the immediate neighborhood. Fired by what he heard from Joliet, La Salle resolved to obtain permission from the King of France to go down the Mississippi, and open a trade in buffalo-*hides with the Indians of the South. He hastened to France, and returned the same year, accompanied by an Italian soldier named Tonti, and provided with full powers from his sovereign.

The adventurers—with Father Hennepin, who accompanied them as missionary, and some sixty followers, including boatmen, hunters, and soldiers—began their journey, in the autumn of 1678, in a canoe built under La Salle's direction at Kingston, which carried them safely down the Niagara river and across Lake Erie to Fonawauta Creek, near the Falls at the southern extremity of the lake. Here some months were spent in cultivating the friendship of the Senecas and constructing a little sailing vessel of sixty tons, to which the name of the Griffin was given. The Griffin was successfully launched on Lake Erie on the 7th August, 1679, and entering the narrow strait called Detroit, on which the city of the same name now stands, she rapidly carried the expedition into Lake Huron, and thence through the Straits of Mackinaw to Lake Michigan, on the north-eastern shores of which a little colony was planted.

Lake Michigan was now traversed, and, landing on the shores of Green Bay, La Salle made what turned out to be the fatal mistake of sending the Griffin back to Niagara laden with furs, with orders for her captain to re