"the seas, harbours, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers, within the extent of said Louisiana, from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio, ... as also along the river Colbert or Mississippi, and the rivers which discharge themselves thereinto, from its source beyond the country of the Nadouessioux ... as far as the mouth of the sea, or Gulf of Mexico, and also to the mouth of the river of Palms, upon the assurance we have from the natives of these countries, that we are the first Europeans who have descended or ascended the said river Colbert." They had forgotten Pineda and the unfortunate Soto and Moscoso, to say nothing of the still more unfortunate Narvaez, who was wrecked at the river's entrance. This claim certainly was broad; it covered almost everything. La Salle had a magnificent dream of developing this enormous region for his King, and proceeding to France he came back with vessels laden with supplies and colonists. But they missed the mouth of the river. Then a series of disasters left the leader stranded, as the Narvaez survivors had been, on the coast of Texas. La Salle, of all men, surely deserved more generous treatment from Fortune. But worse was to follow. They struck out for the north-east to reach the French settlements. La Salle was ambushed and shot March 18, 1687, by a villainous member of the company, leagued with other assassins, and his body stripped and thrown to the wolves. But La Salle needed no gorgeous funeral train, no costly sepulchre to carry through the ages to come his illustrious name.