First French Foot-Prints Beyond the Lakes. 87 



he so far recovered as to proceed to St. Joseph. Another Jesuit 

 was also met at Chicago by four score warriors of the Illinois 

 tribe in 1676. 



Three years afterward, in 1679, La Salle found ro inhabitants 

 there. On his map made the next year he describe 1 it as a port- 

 age of only a thousand paces, yet thought it in no way suited 

 for communication between the lake and Illinois river, as the latter 

 at low water was for forty leagues not navigable. Within two 

 years after that, however, in 1681, he preferred this route for his 

 own passage. On the sixteenth of December starting from Chi- 

 cago with canoes on sleds, he arrived at the mouth of the Mis- 

 sissippi in one hundred and seven days, — that is <*n the sixth of 

 the following April. 



The Chicago portage was traversed by Tonty, La Salle's most 

 trusted and trust- worthy lieutenant, June, 1683, and by Durantye in 

 1685. La Salle's brother detained there in 1688 by a storm, 

 made maple sugar, and in one hundred and ten days after leaving 

 its harbor, had made his way to Montreal. 



After eleven years more, St. Cosme found a house of the 

 Jesuits there established, at which, as at a sort of post office, 

 Father Gravier obtained in 1700, letters from Paris. From that 

 point La Salle had written a letter to La Barre, Grovernor of 

 Canada, in 1683, and in the map by Franquelin, royal hydro- 

 grapher at Quebec, dated 1684, eighty houses, — meaning wig- 

 wams, are set down on the site of Chicago. It was then viewed 

 as a northern out post of La Salle's central castle — the Rock of 

 St. Louis, — that marvellous natural fortress which the French 

 explorer found ready to his hand, — " his wish exactly to his 

 heart's desire," now called Starved Rock., near the confluence of the 

 Big Yermilion with the Illinois river, a few miles west of Ottawa. 



All the way down from this era of La Salle the French as 

 rovers, traders, settlers, soldiers and missionaries in our North- 

 west, are traceable generation after generation. The chain is as 

 unbroken as that of apostolical succession has ever been fancied. 



How shall we account for the phenomenon I have now sketched, 

 that the French penetrated so far inland so early and so persist- 

 ently? My answer to this question is implied in the words Fun, 

 Faith, Fur, False Fancies, Finesse and Feudalism. 



