44 THE DISCOVERY OF BURLINGTON BAY. 



The missionaries attached to the expedition were Francois Dollier 

 de Casson, and Rene de Brehart de Gallinee, both attached to the 

 order of St. Sulpice. The former had been a calvary officer under 

 Marshall Turenne, and was at the date of the expedition superior of 

 the seminary belonging to the order at Montreal. His strength was 

 said to be so prodigious that he was said to be able to carry two men 

 sitting one on each hand. Galinee, the historian of the enterprise, 

 had no little reputation as a surveyor and astronomer. Both priests 

 for the conversion of the heathen to the Roman faith, and long been 

 waiting for some favorable opportunity to penetrate for that purpose 

 the vast and unexplored regions of the west. 



La -Salle, then 26 years of age, had resided in Canada three 

 years, and had not acquired the renown which his subsequent ad- 

 ventures and explorations affixed to his name, but the opportunities 

 which he had enjoyed for intercourse with the Iroquois and other 

 western tribes, who were accustomed to visit Montreal for the pur- 

 pose of trade, had not been neglected. From them he had heard of 

 the Ohio, the Mississippi and the the boundless forests and prairies 

 through which they flowed. They told him of the vast lakes as yet 

 unnavigated save by their frail canoes, on the borders of which were 

 inexhaustible mines yielding the richest ores of iron and copper. 

 His imagination kindled at the recital, and so great was his ambition 

 to accomplish his favorite object, that he sold the possessions he had 

 acquired in Canada to realize the means of defraying the expenses 

 of an expedition to test the truth of the Indian narrations. He re- 

 solved to ascend the St. Lawrence, and passing through the chain 

 of western lakes, to seek for the great river, that having its source 

 in the Iroquois country flowed, according to Indian authority, into 

 a far distant sea, and which Champlain and L'Escarbot had confi- 

 dently hoped might be the western road to China and Japan. 



In the summer of 1669 La Salle organized, with two Sulpicians, 

 a joint expedition to accomplish their several purposes — the former 

 to prosecute his discoveries in the west, and the missionaries to bap- 

 tise the Neophytes they should secure among the tribes found in the 

 valleys of the Ohio, the Mississippi and the lakes. When everything 

 was ready for a speedy departure, the unfortunate assassination of 

 an Iroquois chief by three French soldiers at Montreal, detained 

 them fifteen days, and threatened a renewal of the war between the 



