farther permission to make journeys of discovery towards the Sioux and the
Mississippi, as his Majesty thinks his subjects better employed in
cultivating the land. The letter adds, however, that La Salle is to be
allowed to continue his discoveries, if they appear to be useful. The same
instructions are repeated in a letter of the Minister of the Marine to the
new Intendant of Canada, De Meules.]

Meanwhile, La Salle, buried in the western wilderness, remained for the
time ignorant of La Barre's disposition towards him, and made an effort to
secure his good-will and countenance. He wrote to him from his Rock of St.
Louis, early in the spring of 1683, expressing the hope that he should
have from him the same support as from Count Frontenac; "although," he
says, "my enemies will try to influence you against me." His attachment to
Frontenac, he pursues, has been the cause of all the late governor's
enemies turning against him. He then recounts his voyage down the
Mississippi; says that, with twenty-two Frenchmen, he caused all the
tribes along the river to ask for peace; speaks of his right, under the
royal patent, to build forts anywhere along his route, and grant out lands
around them, as at Fort Frontenac.

"My losses in my enterprises," he continues, "have exceeded forty thousand
crowns. I am now going four hundred leagues south-south-west of this
place, to induce the Chickasaws to follow the Shawanoes, and other tribes,
and settle, like them, at St. Louis. It remained only to settle French
colonists here, and this I have already done. I hope you will not detain
them as _coureurs de bois_, when they come down to Montreal to make
necessary purchases. I am aware that I have no right to trade with the
tribes who descend to Montreal, and I shall not permit such trade to my
men; nor have I ever issued licenses to that effect, as my enemies say
that I have done." [Footnote: _Lettre de la Salle a La Barre, Fort St.