64 NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST 



demanding tlie credence usually given to the higher class of 

 probabilities. 



Marquette himself never returned to Quebec to give a re- 

 lation of his voyage, but remained a year or two, after the 

 supposed time of its occurrence, among the Indians living 

 about Lake Illinois (now Michigan), and died there in 1675. 

 It is generally stated that notes of the voyage were not pre- 

 served by himself or his companion. His patron. Talon, had 

 gone to France before he went (if he did go at all) to the 

 Missisippi. The brief narrative that has been published of 

 their supposed voyage, does not name the point from which 

 they embarked, on or near the Strait of Machinac. It was 

 not published till after the upper Missisippi had been explored 

 by Hennepin and La Sale. It gives no particulars which 

 were not made known by them ; and there is much dis- 

 crepancy as to the time Avhen the voyage is alleged to have 

 been performed. In the relation published in the name of 

 Marquette, it is stated that they embarked on the 13th of 

 May, 1673, and arrived at the Missisippi on the 17th of 

 June. The statement published in the name of Joliet dates 

 the arrival at the Missisippi the 15th of June, 1674, differing 

 both in the year and the day. Heriot, again, states it to have 

 taken place in June, 1672. Book-making was then, as now, 

 a trade at Paris, Amsterdam, and London ; and it is probable 

 that the few brief pages annexed to Hennepin, Description 

 d'une nouvelle pays, &c., purporting to be the statement of 

 Marquette and Joliet, and the whole of the volume was a 

 work manufactured by some author to suit the reading mar- 

 ket of the time. Such was the case with the work ascribed 

 to the Chevalier Tonti, the companion of La Sale, who, when 

 the work was mentioned to him by Mr. Iberville, denied 

 having any hand in it, saying, it was apparently written by 



