What was in La Salle's mind in suggesting this southern adventure can only be conjectured. Was it the last desperate stake of a ruined gambler? Or was it an over-sanguine attempt to realize the great object of his life, to master the far West by moving up instead of down its waterways, by entering not through Canada, where every step would be dogged by jealousy and intrigue, but through the mouths of the Mississippi, where climate and natives would be less formidable foes than the Governor of Canada and his unscrupulous clique of confederates? If, as it is reasonable to suppose, he still clung with the determination of his character to the western enterprise, in which he had already achieved so much, he added to it a highly-coloured picture of conquest in Mexico; and he drew his map of Mexico as adjoining the lands on the Mississippi, omitting in ignorance most of the wide area of intervening territory, now included in the State of Texas. [Sidenote: _The expedition sails._] [Sidenote: _It reaches the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico._] [Sidenote: _Landing on the shores of Texas._] Four vessels set sail, freighted with all things necessary to found a colony, carrying soldiers, artisans, married women, and young girls. They were a doomed company; from first to last all went wrong. There was divided command, and Beaujeu, the admiral of the ships, a Norman like La Salle, had with some reason little confidence in the expedition or its leader. They made in the first instance for St. Domingo, but one of the four ships which was carrying the stores was cut off by Spanish buccaneers before reaching the island. At St. Domingo, La Salle was laid low with fever; and, while he was between life and death, his followers rioted and sickened on shore. After a delay of two months, the {166} expedition started again, weakened by desertion and disease. The ships entered the Gulf of Mexico, passed--without knowing it--the mouths of the Mississippi, and on New Year's Day, 1685, anchored off the coast of Texas. Somewhere on this coast, in the vicinity either of Matagorda Bay or of Galveston Bay, La Salle effected a landing, where a series of lagoons that lined the shore concealed, as he thought, the main outlet of the Mississippi. Disaster still attended the enterprise: one of the ships was wrecked on the reefs, the natives of the land proved unfriendly; and when Beaujeu, the admiral, having given what help he could, sailed away in the middle of March, he left behind on desolate shores a despondent band of French men and women groping for a river which could not be found, in present trouble and without clear guidance for the future. [Sidenote: _Founding of Fort St. Louis._] [Sidenote: _Distress of the settlement._] [Sidenote: _Attempt to reach Canada._]