use of the settlers, on condition of the payment by each of five sous a
year. He reserved four hundred and twenty arpents for his own personal
domain, and on this he began to clear the ground and erect buildings.
Similar to this were the beginnings of all the Canadian seigniories formed
at this troubled period. [Footnote: The above particulars have been
unearthed by the indefatigable Abbe Faillon. Some of La Salle's grants are
still preserved in the ancient records of Montreal.]

That La Salle came to Canada with objects distinctly in view, is probable
from the fact that he at once began to study the Indian languages, and
with such success that he is said, within two or three years, to have
mastered the Iroquois and seven or eight other languages and dialects.
[Footnote: _Papiers de Famille_, MSS. He is said to have made several
journeys into the forests, towards the North, in the years 1667 and 1668,
and to have satisfied himself that little could be hoped from explorations
in that direction.] From the shore of his seigniory, he could gaze
westward over the broad breast of the Lake of St. Louis, bounded by the
dim forests of Chateauguay and Beauharnois; but his thoughts flew far
beyond, across the wild and lonely world that stretched towards the
sunset. Like Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of a
passage to the South Sea, and a new road for commerce to the riches of
China and Japan. Indians often came to his secluded settlement; and, on
one occasion, he was visited by a band of the Seneca Iroquois, not long
before the scourge of the colony, but now, in virtue of the treaty,
wearing the semblance of friendship. The visitors spent the winter with
him, and told him of a river called the Ohio, rising in their country, and
flowing into the sea, but at such a distance that its mouth could only be
reached after a journey of eight or nine months. Evidently, the Ohio and
the Mississippi are here merged into one. [Footnote: According to Dollier
de Casson, who had good opportunities of knowing, the Iroquois always