of the river, they grasped the fact that it must reach, not the western
ocean, but the southern gulf first discovered by the Spaniards.
Marquette died not long afterwards, worn out by his labours in the
wilderness, and was buried beneath the little chapel at St. Ignace.
Joliet's name henceforth disappears from the annals of the West.

Réné Robert Cavelier, better known as the Sieur de la Salle, completed
the work commenced by the trader and missionary. In 1666 he obtained a
grant of land at the head of the rapids above Montreal by the side of
that beautiful expanse of the St. Lawrence, still called Lachine, a name
first given in derisive allusion to his hope of finding a short route to
China. In 1679 he saw the Niagara Falls for the first time, and the
earliest sketch is to be found in _La Nouvelle Découverte_ written or
compiled by that garrulous, vain, and often mendacious Recollet Friar,
Louis Hennepin, who accompanied La Salle on this expedition. In the
winter of 1681-82 this famous explorer reached the Mississippi, and for
weeks followed its course through the novel and wondrous scenery of a
southern land. On the 9th of April, 1682, at a point just above the
mouth of the great river, La Salle took formal possession of the
Mississippi valley in the name of Louis XIV, with the same imposing
ceremonies that distinguished the claim asserted by St. Lusson at the
Sault in the lake region. By the irony of fate, La Salle failed to
discover the mouth of the river when he came direct from France to the
Gulf of Mexico in 1685, but landed somewhere on Matagorda Bay on the
Texan coast, where he built a fort for temporary protection. Finding his
position untenable, he decided in 1687 to make an effort to reach the
Illinois country, but when he had been a few days on this perilous
journey he was treacherously murdered by some of his companions near the
southern branch of Trinity River. His body was left to the beasts and
birds of prey. Two of the murderers were themselves killed by their