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mighty cataract,—fittest emblem of eternity,—now
sending forward a detachment into the country of the
Illinois to prepare the way for his reception.
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-
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,
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
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
ten men to guard the
Fort of the Miamis,
La Salle