Page:Joutel's journal of La Salle's last voyage, 1684-7 (IA joutelsjournalof00jout).pdf/39

 1682) at a spot where a column was erected and near it a plate was buried bearing the arms inscribed with the words of France, and "Louis Le Grande, Roy de France et de Navarre, Règne, Le Neuvième, Avril, 1682. Then while the Te Deum, the Exaudéat and the Domine Salvum fac Regem were chanted, the volleys of musketry discharged by the men under arms, with cries of "Vive le Roi;" a cross was planted beside the column and Le Sieur de Salle, sword in hand, proclaimed the new-found territory as Louisiana, and Louis XIV as its King and rightful Lord.

The vast domain thus secured, after the manner of those times, to the French Crown, extended from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Rio Grande and the Gulf of Mexico to the farthest springs of the Missouri; but the name—Louisiana—which he gave it is now confined to a single commonwealth in the great sisterhood of states forming the United States of America.

Now, in the culmination of his triumph he was seized by an illness so severe as to threaten his life; and was unable to reach Fort Miami, even by slow stages, before August, and to rejoin Tonti, whom he had dispatched with news of his success to Canada. It seems to have been about this time that be began to abandon the difficult access which he had hitherto found, through Canada, with all its dangers and enemies, both whites and Indians; and to reach the region of his hopes and toils more directly by way of the Gulf of Mexico and the mouth of the Mississippi. His plans of descending that river by means of a vessel had twice been thwarted by disasters which proved its futility; and to attempt his purpose with canoes would be fraught with much difficulty and an enormous expense. He purposed now, in view of all his past experiences, to form on the banks of the Illinois a colony of French and Indians, as a place of storage of the furs which could be gathered by the various Western tribes; and as a defense against the Iroquois, who were alike inimical to the French and their