made so charming a prospect. Herds of deer and flocks of swan and wild turkeys were plentiful. The bears and other beasts and birds, whose names were unknown, were, in the language of the missionary, "extraordinary relishing."

This was twenty years before the settlement of Detroit. Passing on up the river, they entered the lake, which they named St. Clair, from the day on which they traversed its shallow waters; and, at length, Lake Huron lay before them, like a vast sea sparkling in the sun. Here again they chanted a Te Deum, as a thank-offering to the Almighty for the prosperity that had attended them.

The gentle breezes which now swelled the canvas of the Griffin seemed to whisper of a quick and prosperous voyage to the head-waters of the Huron ; but soon the wind died away to a calm, then freshened to a gale, then rose to a furious tempest. The elements were at war. The raging lake threatened, in her wrath, to swallow the little vessel and all her crew. Even the stout heart of La Salle was made to quake with fear, and he called upon all to commend themselves to Heaven. Save the godless pilot, who was loud in his anathemas against his commander "for having brought him, after the honor he had won on the ocean, to drown, at last, ignominiously, in fresh water," all clamored to the saints. With the same breath La Salle and the missionary declared St. Anthony the patron of the expedition, and a score of others promised that a chapel should be built in his honor if he would but save them from their jeopardy. But the obedient winds were tamed by a greater than St. Anthony, and the Griffin "plunged on her way through foaming surges that still grew calmer as she advanced." Woody Bois Blanc soon lifts the top of her pristine forests to the view of the anxious mariners. In the dim distance are the Manitoulines. Farther on, “sitting like an emerald gem in the clear, pellucid wave, is the rock-girt, fairy isle" of Mackinac. St. Ignace, the scene of Marquette's missionary labors, and the site of that chapel beneath which repose his peaceful ashes, is before them, and Pequodenong, where as yet the smoke of the calumet of peace has always

ascended, and the shrill war-whoop has never been heard, rises gradually and majestically from the crystal waters which cover, but can not conceal, the pebbly depth beneath. It was a grand and imposing scene that lay spread out before them.

The following is from Hennepin: "The 27th, in the morning, we continued our course north-west, with a south-east wind, which carried us the same day to Michilimackinac, where we anchored in a bay at six fathom water, upon a shiny white bottom. That bay is sheltered by the coast and a bank lying from the south west to the north; but it lies exposed to the south winds, which are very violent in that country.

"Michilimackinac is a neck of land to the north of the mouth of the strait through which the Lake of the Illinois discharges itself into the Lake Huron. That canal is about three leagues long and one broad.

"We lay between two different nations of savages. Those who inhabit the Point of Michilimackinac are called Hurons; and the others, who are about three or four leagues more northward, are Ottawas. Those savages were equally surprised to see a ship in their country; and the noise of our cannon, of which we made a general discharge, filled them with great astonishment. We went to see the Ottawas, and celebrated mass in their habitation. M. La Salle was finely dressed, having a scarlet cloak with a broad gold lace, and most of his men, with their arms, attended him. The chief captains of that people received us with great civilities, after their own way; and some of them came on board with us, to see our ship, which rode all that while in the bay or creek I have spoken of. It was a diverting prospect to see, every day, above six score canoes about it, and savages staring, and admiring that fine wooden canoe, as they called it. They brought us abundance of whitings, and some trouts of fifty or sixty pound weight.

"We went the next day to pay a visit to the Hurons, who inhabit a rising ground on a neck of land over against Michilimackinac. Their villages are fortified with palisades of twentyfive feet high, and always situated upon eminences or hills.

They received us with more respect than the Ottawas; for they made a triple discharge of all the small guns they had, having learned from some Europeans that it is the greatest civility among us. However, they took such a jealousy to our ship that, as we understood since, they endeavored to make our expedition odious to all the nations about them.

"The Hurons and Ottawas are in confederacy together against the Iroquois, their common enemy. They sow Indian corn, which is their ordinary food; for they have nothing else to live upon, except some fish they take in the lakes. They boil it with their sagamittee, which is a kind of broth made with water and the flour of the corn, which they beat in a mortar made of the trunk of a tree, which they make hollow with fire." La Salle remained at Mackinac until the second day of September, when he set sail for Green Bay. At this point, contrary to orders, he collected a cargo of furs, with which he dispatched the Griffin to Niagara, while he himself, with a part of his men, repaired in bark canoes to the head of Lake Michigan. Here he anxiously awaited the return of his little vessel; but, alas! he waited in vain. No tidings ever reached him of the ill-fated bark; and to this day none can tell whether she was swallowed in the depths of the lake, destroyed by Indians, or made the prize of traitors.

The loss of the Griffin was a very severe stroke upon La Salle; yet he was not discouraged. With inflexible energy, he pursued his course. From Lake Michigan he proceeded into the country of the Illinois, where he wintered. Early in the following Spring he dispatched Hennepin to discover the sources of the Mississippi, while he himself returned to Canada for new supplies, made necessary by the loss of the Griffin. In 1681, he returned; and in 1682, having constructed a vessel of a size suitable for the purpose, he descended the Mississippi to the Gulf.

Having completed the exploration of the Great River, his next step was to plant colonies along its banks; for which purpose he labored, but with only partial success, until 1687, when he was assassinated by one of his own men.

Some modern writers have stated that the first fort at Mackinac, which at that time meant little more than a tradinghouse surrounded by a stockade, was built by La Salle in 1679; but the fact that Hennepin makes no mention of this, and that La Salle was prohibited from trading with the Indians of this region, would seem to be sufficient proof to the contrary. Besides, if we may take the testimony of Holmes's "American Annals," this fort or trading-post was first established in 1673.

Of the early history of this post, subsequent to the date of La Salle's visit, we have only such information as may be gathered from the notices of travelers and others whose writings have come down to us.

In 1688, the Baron La Hontan, an officer of rare accomplishments, visited this post, and from him we have the following: "At last, finding that my provisions were almost out, I resolved to go to Michilimackinac, to buy up corn from the Hurons and Ottawas. . I arrived at this place on the 18th of April, and my uneasiness and trouble took date from the day of my arrival; for I found the Indian corn so scarce, by reason of the preceding bad harvests, that I despaired of finding half so much as I wanted. But, after all, I am hopeful that two villages will furnish me with almost as much as I have occasion for. Mr. Cavalier arrived here, May 6th, being accompanied with his nephew, Father Anastase the Recollect, a pilot, one of the savages, and some few Frenchmen, which made a sort of a party-colored retinue. These Frenchmen were some of those that Mr. de la Salle had conducted upon the discovery of the Mississippi. They gave out that they are sent to Canada, in order to go to France, with some dispatches from Mr. de la Salle to the King; but we suspect that he is dead, because he does not return along with them. I shall not spend time in taking notice of their great journey overland; which, by the account they gave, can not be less than eight hundred leagues. Michilimackinac, the place I am now in, is certainly a place of great importance. It lies in the latitude of forty-five degrees and thirty minutes. It is not above half a league dis

tant from the Illinese Lake,* an account of which, and, indeed, of all the other lakes, you may expect elsewhere. Here the Hurons and Ottawas have, each of them, a village; the one being severed from the other by a single palisade; but the Ottawas are beginning to build a fort upon a hill that stands ten or twelve hundred paces off. This precaution they were prompted to by the murder of a certain Huron, called Sandaouires, who was assassinated in the Saginaw River by four young Ottawas. In this place the Jesuits have a little house or college, adjoining to a sort of a church, and inclosed with poles that separate it from the village of the Hurons. These good fathers lavish away all their divinity and patience, to no purpose, in converting such ignorant infidels; for all the length they can bring them to, is, that oftentimes they will desire baptism for their dying children, and some few superannuated persons consent to receive the sacrament of baptism when they find themselves at the point of death. The Coureurs de Bois have but a very small settlement here; though at the same time it is not inconsiderable, as being the staple of all the goods that they truck with the south and the west savages; for they can not avoid passing this way, when they go to the seats of the Illinese and the Oumamis, or to the Bay des Puans, and to the river of Mississippi. The skins, which they import from these different places, must lie here some time before they are transported to the colony. Michilimackinac is situated very advantageously; for the Iroquese dare not venture, with their sorry canoes, to cross the strait of the Illinese Lake, which is two leagues over ; besides that the Lake of the Hurons is too rough for such slender boats; and as they can not come to it by water, so they can not approach to it by land, by reason of the marshes, fens, and little rivers, which it would be very difficult to cross; not to mention that the strait of the Illinese Lake lies still in their way."

We are also indebted to La Hontan for a map showing the

*Lake Michigan.