First French Foot-Prints Beyond the Lakes. 127 



At that era various nations were rivals in searching for new 

 routes to China, — the Boglish through Hudson Bay, the Dutch 

 north of Lapland, and the French by way of the Great Lakes. 

 They had all been denied access to the Eist Indies either by the 

 Cape of Good Hope or of Horn, — which Spain and Portugal re- 

 spectively blockaded, treating as privateers all who tried to pass. 

 But their hopes were sanguine of finding another road thither, as 

 the Italians when at the fall of Constantinople cut of^ from their 

 medifeval thoroughfare eastward from the Levant, had set their 

 faces westward and discovered America. The spirit of the age, 

 " the grandeur of which," Froude pronounces "among the most 

 sublime phenomena which the earth has witnessed," felt that only 

 a corner of the veil had been lifted. All past findings just gave 

 enough to wake the taste for more. 



Charnplain was the more thoroughly persuaded that the Pacific 

 was near Lake Huron because he had himself beheld Pacific 

 surges at Panama, the lougitude of which is not so far west as 

 that lake by a dozen degrees. His sight strengthened his faith, 

 which was never weak. Quartz pebbles picked up on the river 

 bank at Quebec he thought diamonds, and gave the rock above 

 the name it bears to this day — Cape Diamond. 



On Joliei's return from d own the Mississippi, Frontenacs first 

 feeling was regret that that river had not borne the explorer to 

 the Pacific and to Japan. His next emotion was hope that the 

 Missouri — still anonymous, but called by Joliet a northwest 

 branch entering the Mississippi in latitude 38 degrees — could be 

 ascended to a lake with an outlet into the Vermilion Sea — his 

 name for the Gulf of California. Siven years later, in 1680, 

 Duluth. near the head waters of the Mississippi, heard of Henne- 

 pin as a captive among the Sioux. He sought him out, procured 

 his release and escorted him to Green Bay. But for this call to a 

 mission of mercy, " my design was," says he, " to push on to the 

 sea on the northwest, believed to be the Vermilion Sea, from 

 which a war party had come among the Sioux. Some of its salt 

 they gave to three Frenchmen that I had sent out as a scout, and 

 they brought it to me. According to their report it was no more 

 than twenty days' march to a great lake the water of which was 



