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[164] mighty cataract,—fittest emblem of eternity,—now
Chap. XX.}
sending forward a detachment into the country of the Illinois to prepare the way for his reception.
1679.

Under the auspices of La Salle, Europeans first pitched a tent at Niagara; it was he who, in 1679, amidst the salvo from his little artillery, and the chanting of the Te Deum, and the astonished gaze of the Senecas, first launched a wooden vessel, a bark of sixty tons, on the upper Niagara River, and, in the Griffin, freighted with the colony of fur-traders for the valley of the Mississippi, on the seventh day of August, un-

Aug. 7.
furled a sail to the breezes of Lake Erie. Indifferent to the malignity of those who envied his genius, or were injured by his special privileges, La Salle, first of mariners, sailed over Lake Erie and between the verdant isles of the majestic Detroit; debated planting a colony on its banks; gave a name to Lake St. Clair,
Aug. 17.
from the day on which he traversed its shallow waters; and, after escaping from storms on Lake Huron, and planting a trading-house at Mackinaw, he cast anchor
Aug. 27.
in Green Bay. Here having despatched his brig to Niagara River, with the richest cargo of furs, he himself, with his company in scattered groups, repaired in bark canoes to the head of Lake Michigan; and at the mouth of the St. Joseph's, in that peninsula where Allouez had already gathered a village of Miamis, awaiting the return of the Griffin, he constructed the trading-house, with palisades, known as the Fort of the Miamis. It marks his careful forethought, that he sounded the mouth of the St. Joseph's, and raised buoys to mark the channel. But of his vessel, on which his fortunes so much depended, no things came. Weary of delay, he resolved to penetrate Illinois; and, leaving
Dec. 3.
ten men to guard the Fort of the Miamis, La Salle

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