On the 24th day of July, three long years before, these five weather-worn men and their comrades had seen the shores of France fade slowly from their sight. Out of the harbor of Rochelle had sailed that summer day twenty-four ships. Twenty of the number soon drew away from the rest and turned their bows toward the mouth of the St. Lawrence and New France; the other four sailed on alone.
On board the four ships were near three hundred souls, embarking on a voyage no one of them had made before. One of the boats, the Joly, a ship of war, carried thirty-odd pieces of cannon. But it carried also more precious cargo. Monsieur Beaujeu, a proud man and bold, was its captain; and with him, as leader of the colony that thus fared forth to the glory of the King of France, was Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. Restless and ambitious as ever, he now felt under his feet the roll of decks which the king had given him with godspeed to find the mouth of the Mississippi River and plant there a settlement that would be the beginning of a great new empire in the heart of the American wilderness.
The King of France had caught a glimpse of La Salle’s vision of the future of the Great Valley. He had listened, too, while La Salle had whispered into his eager ears the story of how the hated Spaniards, clinging these many years to the rich lands of Mexico, would fall before the attacks of the French, aided by the hordes of Indians whom they would recruit from the colony about Fort St. Louis and from the lower Mississippi Valley.
In the four ships were a hundred soldiers; and since colonies have need of such, there were carpenters and tool-makers and bakers and stonemasons and engineers. There were also priests and friars—among others La Salle’s brother, the Abbé Cavelier, and Father Anastasius Douay. On board one of the ships was the energetic figure of Father Membré, who was no stranger to the Great Valley of the Mississippi. He had entered it with La Salle, and later had hardly struggled out of it with his friend of the iron hand after the Iroquois raid. He had come back with the gallant party that paddled down the length of the valley to the sea, and had been the one to carry news of the voyage to Canada and to France. Still did he cling to the side of his leader, stanch friend that he was.
Born in the same town of Rouen with La Salle was a man named Henri Joutel. When a mere boy he joined the army, and after serving about sixteen years he had come back to his native town in time to join others who were shipping with their townsman for the trip across the sea. Last of all, these four ships held a handful of women and girls who were ready to try the perils of the sea and the fearsome dangers of a strange land.
Thus they had sailed, a company of colonists of all classes and descriptions—good men and bad, brave men and weak, workers and drones, gentlemen and stout-hearted peasants, debauched nobles and the riffraff of seaport towns; men who took their load and endured through hardship, sickness, and despair; and men whom Joutel declared were fit only to eat part of the provisions.
Never had the unconquerable spirit of La Salle met such stubborn blows as now. In the first place the arrangements of the voyage were well-nigh fatal to success, for the company had two heads, each one a man accustomed to command alone and impatient of any other authority. Beaujeu, an old naval officer who was the captain of the fleet, saw little of greatness in La Salle, and looked upon him as a dreamer if not a fanatic. La Salle, leader of the colony, with authority to determine the route to be taken, looked with distrust upon Beaujeu, held his own counsel about his plans, and regarded the captain as his enemy and the chief obstacle to the successful outcome of his mission. Before ever the ships set sail these two men had their quarrels, and on the open seas it was no better.
Years of bitter experiences, of wilderness hardships, of daily and nightly perils, of disappointments and losses, had hardened the temper of La Salle’s will; and these years had not softened a certain coldness and harshness of manner that lost him many friends. Suspicion and doubt of his fellows deepened in his heart with every turn of his wheel of fortune. With all his remarkable power over the Indians, he constantly failed to understand and make himself loved by the men of his own race over whom he was in command. Naturally with his mongrel company of voyagers things went sadly wrong. No one appreciated better than Tonty, as he listened to the tale of the Abbé and J............