Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/148

128 : Ambassador M. Jusserand, in 1913, commenting upon the lead tablet mentioned in this journal, said:

"The text of the plate so wonderfully recovered has a little story to tell. As it was not easy to print a text on the way, during such difficult expeditions, people would start with ready-prepared ones. The Chevalier seems to have provided himself with one which had been made in view of his elder brother's before mentioned expedition of 1741. It bears, in fact, the name of the eldest of the La Verendryes the text stamped under the arms of France reading:

Anno XXVI Regni Ludovici XV—Prorege illustrissimo Domino, Domino Marchione de Beauharnois, MDCCXXXI—Petrus Gaultier de Laverendrie Posuit.'

"That is: In the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Louis XV., the most illustrious Lord, the Lord Marquis of Beauharnois being Viceroy, 1741, Peter Gaultier de Laverendrie placed this.'

"But the obverse of the plate, shows that it was really turned to use by the Chevalier and at the exact moment mentioned by him. Instead of the beautiful regular inscriptions engraved at home in Latin for the elder brother before he started, we have but a rough one, made as best they could, with the point of a knife, and certainly not by Verendrye himself. As the placing of the plate in the earth was done secretly, and he himself was probably staying, as usual, with the chief of the tribe he apparently gave orders to one of his followers to do the necessary work. That follower must have been one of the 'two Frenchmen' which he mentions without giving their names as having accompanied him. It was not his brother who is not named in the plate, and who, as we see in the journal, would sometimes be stationed at a different place. The author of the inscription was a man of little education who writes 'chevalier' with a y and a t: 'Chevalyet,' and who apparently performed his work in some hurry. So far as it can be read on the photograph which you had the kindness of sending me, the text is: