quantity of furs which they had with them, he paddled alone towards the
town. Count Frontenac chanced to be here; and, looking from the window of
a house near the river, he saw, approaching in a canoe, a Recollet father,
whose appearance indicated the extremity of hard service; for his face was
worn and sunburnt, and his tattered habit of St. Francis was abundantly
patched with scraps of buffalo skin. When at length he recognized the
long-lost Hennepin, he received him, as the father writes, "with all the
tenderness which a missionary could expect from a person of his rank and
quality." [Footnote: (1697), 471.] He kept him for twelve days in his own
house, and listened with interest to such of his adventures as the friar
saw fit to divulge.

And here we bid farewell to Father Hennepin. "Providence," he writes,
"preserved my life that I might make known my great discoveries to the
world." He soon after went to Europe, where the story of his travels found
a host of readers, but where he died at last in a deserved obscurity.
[Footnote: More than twenty editions of Hennepin's travels appeared, in
French, English, Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish. Most of them include
the mendacious narrative of the pretended descent of the Mississippi. For
a list of them, see _Hist. Mag._, i. 346; ii. 24.

The following is from a letter of La Salle, dated at Fort Frontenac, 22
Aug. 1681. This, with one or two other passages of his letters, shows that
he understood the friar's character, though he could scarcely have
foreseen his scandalous attempts to defame him and rob him of his just
honors. "J'ai cru qu'il etoit a propos de vous faire le narre des
aventures de ce canot (du Picard et d'Accau) parce que je ne doute pas
qu'on n'en parle; et si vous souhaitez en conferer avec le P. Louis Hempin
(sic) Recollect qui est repasse en France, il faut un peu le connaitre,
car il ne manquera pas d'exagerer toutes choses, c'est son caractere, et a