The descent to the sea, which in after years he falsely claimed to have made, was soon afterwards achieved by La Salle. After rejoining Tonty at Michillimackinac, he went back with him to Fort Frontenac and Montreal, and once more procured men and money to renew his enterprise. Again turning west, he reached Fort Miami late in the autumn of 1681, and on the shortest day his expedition left Lake Michigan. Crossing from the St. Joseph to the Chicago creek, and from the latter to the Des Plaines river, the northern tributary of the Illinois, they embarked--fifty-four Frenchmen and Indians, including thirteen women and children--in six canoes, and took their way steadily down stream. They joined the Mississippi, they passed the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio. Halfway between the Ohio and the Arkansas, {162} on the east bank of the Mississippi, they built and manned a small wooden fort, naming it Fort Prudhomme after one of their number who for a while lost himself in the woods. Again holding on their course, under softer skies than those of Canada, they reached the mouth of the Arkansas river, whence Joliet and Marquette had turned back; and there, among friendly and wondering Indians, they proclaimed the French King lord of the land. Below the Arkansas they came to other Indian tribes, such as the Spaniards had known, who, under dome-shaped roofs, worshipped the sun. At length the river parted into three channels, as it neared the sea; and, dividing into three parties, the bold voyagers soon met again on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. [Sidenote: _La Salle reaches the Gulf of Mexico._] [Sidenote: _Louisiana._] It was April 9, 1682, when, on the southernmost edge of the new domain, a column was reared inscribed with the arms of France and with the name of _Louis le Grand_. The secret of the great river was won at last, from its source to its mouth; and, claiming all the lands which it watered for the Crown of France,[8] La Salle called them by the name 'Louisiana.' [Footnote 8: In La Salle's proclamation the basin of the Ohio was excluded from Louisiana, as the words are 'from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio' (Parkman's _La Salle_, 12th ed., p. 286).] [Sidenote: _He returns up stream._] [Sidenote: _The colony on the Illinois._] [Sidenote: _Fort St. Louis._]