meditate on the plan fixed in his brain of discovering a passage to
China and the Indies, and upon learning the news that MM. Dollier de
Casson and Gallinée were going to christianize the wild tribes of
south-western Canada, he hastened to rejoin the two devoted
missionaries. They set out in the summer of 1669, with twenty-two
Frenchmen. Arriving at Niagara, La Salle suddenly changed his mind, and
abandoned his travelling companions, under the pretext of illness. No
more was needed for the Frenchman, _né malin_,[7] to fix upon the
seigniory of the future discoverer of the mouth of the Mississippi the
name of Lachine; M. Dollier de Casson is suspected of being the author
of this gentle irony.

Eight years later the explorations of Joliet and Father Marquette
revived his instincts as a discoverer; he betook himself to France in
1677 and easily obtained authority to pursue, at his own expense, the
discovery already begun. Back in Canada the following year, La Salle
thoroughly prepared for this expedition, accumulating provisions at Fort
Niagara, and visiting the Indian tribes. In 1679, accompanied by the
Chevalier de Tonti, he set out at the head of a small troop, and passed
through Michilimackinac, then through the Baie des Puants. From there he
reached the Miami River, where he erected a small fort, ascended the
Illinois, and, reaching a camp of the Illinois Indians, made an alliance
with this tribe, obtaining from them permission to erect upon their soil
a fort which he called Crèvecoeur. He left M. de Tonti there with a few
men and two Récollet missionaries, Fathers de la Ribourde and Membré,
and set out again with all haste for Fort Frontenac, for he was very
anxious regarding the condition of his own affairs. He had reason to be.
"His creditors," says the Abbé Ferland, "had had his goods seized after
his departure from Fort Frontenac; his brigantine _Le Griffon_ had been
lost, with furs valued at thirty thousand francs; his employees had