%55. The French on the Mississippi.%--In the course of these explorations the French heard accounts from the Indians of a great river to the westward, and in 1672 Father Marquette (mar-ket') and Louis Joliet (zho-le-a') were sent by the governor of New France to search for it. They set out, in May, 1673, from Michilimackinac, a French trading post and mission at the foot of Lake Michigan. With five companions, in two birch-bark canoes, they paddled up the lake to Green Bay, entered Fox River, and, dragging the boats through its boiling rapids, came to a village where lived the Miamis and the Kickapoos. These Indians tried to dissuade them from going on; but Marquette was resolute, and on the 10th of June, 1673, he led his followers over the swamps and marshes that separated Fox River from a river which the Indian guides assured him flowed into the Mississippi. This westward-flowing river he called the Wisconsin, and there the guides left him, as he says, "alone, amid that unknown country, in the hands of God." The little band shoved their canoes boldly out upon the river, and for seven days floated slowly downward into the unknown. At last, on the 17th of June, they paddled out on the bosom of the Mississippi, and, turning their canoes to the south, followed the bends and twists of the river, past the mouth of the Missouri, past the Ohio, to a point not far from the mouth of the Arkansas. There the voyage ended, and the party went slowly back to the Lakes.[1] [Footnote 1: Read Parkman's _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_.] %56. La Salle finishes the Work of Marquette and Joliet.%--The discovery of Marquette and Joliet was the greatest of the age. Yet five years went by before Robert de la Salle (lah sahl') set forth with authority from the French King "to labor at the discovery of the western part of New France," and began the attempt to follow the river to the sea. In 1678 La Salle and his companions left Canada, and made their way to the shore of Lake Erie, where during the winter they built and launched the _Griffin_, the first ship that ever floated on those waters. In this they sailed to the mouth of Green Bay, and from there pushed on to the Illinois River, to an Indian camp not far from the site of Peoria, Ill. Just below this camp La Salle built Fort Crèvecoeur (cra'v-ker, a word meaning heart-break, vexation). [Illustration: %FRENCH CLAIMS% MISSIONS AND TRADING POSTS IN MISSISSIPPI VALLEY %in 1700%] Leaving the party there in charge of Henri de Tonty to construct another ship, he with five companions went back to Canada. On his return he found that Fort Crèvecoeur was in ruins, and that Tonty and the few men who had been faithful were gone, he knew not where. In the hope of meeting them he pushed on down the Illinois to the Mississippi. To go on would have been easy, but he turned back to find Tonty, and passed the winter on the St. Joseph River.