The Great Lakes -- Sieur de La Salle -- Lake St. Clair -- Lake Huron -- Detroit -- Ann Arbor -- Mackinac Island -- Sault Sainte Marie -- Lake Superior -- Lake Nepigon -- Thunder Bay -- Port Arthur -- Kakabika Falls -- The Pictured Rocks -- Marquette -- Keweenaw -- Iron and Copper -- Houghton -- Lake Gogebic -- Superior City -- Duluth -- Messabi and Vermillion Ranges -- Green Bay -- Wisconsin -- Milwaukee -- Waukesha -- Madison -- Rock Island -- Davenport -- Moline Rapids -- Dubuque -- Iowa -- Black Hawk -- Minnesota -- La Crosse -- Lake Pepin -- Falls of St. Anthony -- St. Paul -- Minneapolis -- Fort Snelling -- Flour and Lumber -- Lake Minnetonka -- Minnehaha Falls -- Hiawatha and Minnehaha -- Source of the Mississippi -- Itasca Lake -- Minnesota River -- Red River of the North -- Ancient Lake Agassiz -- Sioux Falls -- Fargo -- Great Wheat Farms -- Manitoba -- Rat Portage -- Keewatin -- Winnipeg -- Hudson Bay Company -- Dakota -- Bismarck -- The Bad Lands -- Yellowstone River -- Montana -- Big Horn River -- Custer Massacre -- Livingston -- Cinnabar Mountain -- Yellowstone National Park -- Mammoth Hot Springs -- Norris Geyser Basin -- Firehole River -- Lower, Middle and Upper Geyser Basins -- Yellowstone Lake and Falls -- The Grand Canyon -- Two-Ocean Pond -- Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way. THE GREAT LAKES. René Robert Cavelier, the Sieur de La Salle, was the chief French pilgrim and adventurer in the seventeenth century who explored the Great Lakes and valley of the Mississippi, and secured for his country the vast empire of Louisiana, stretching from Canada to the Gulf. His explorations were made in 1669 and again in 1678, and like all the discoverers of that early time he was hunting for the water way thought to lead to the South Sea and provide a route to China. The historian Parkman describes La Salle as one of the most remarkable explorers whose names live in history; the hero of a fixed idea and determined purpose; an untiring pilgrim pushing onward towards the goal he was never to attain; the pioneer who guided America to the possession of her richest heritage. Throughout the northwest his memory is preserved in the names of rivers, towns, and otherwise, and his maps and narratives gave the earliest geography of the Lakes and the vast and prolific region obtained from France in the Louisiana cession.