counties have their names been given, and their statues in bronze and marble are to be seen in several places in America to-day. Jolliet and Marquette had begun the work; it now remained for another strong, ardent, adventurous spirit to continue it. Such a one was close at hand in the person of Réné Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. As a young man he had come to Canada from his native city of Rouen, filled with the most romantic ideas of winning fame and wealth in the wilderness. To learn the Indian language and ways he had left the towns and led the roving life of a bushranger, making long, lonely canoe journeys and dwelling in the Indian wigwams. He, too, had heard of the Father of Waters, the vast Mississippi, and tried to reach it, but, as we have seen, Jolliet was there before him. But La Salle did not accept Jolliet's conclusions. He refused to believe that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico--he thought it led to the Pacific. He was full of faith in the existence of a short route to China. When any one met him on his return from an expedition, however short, they would jokingly ask him, "Venez vous de la Chine?" ("Do you come from China?") La Salle had bought an estate not far from Montreal, and this estate came at last to be called in derision {110} La Chine, and Lachine it is called to this hour. But La Salle was not the kind of man to be discouraged. He was determined to settle the matter one way or another, and into his plans Frontenac entered heartily. But for some years other work claimed La Salle's attention--work of a pioneering sort. He believed that before the French could lay strong hands on the west, where the English had already begun to penetrate, forts and stations ought to be built and a firm alliance made with the Indians. With Frontenac's approval, he assumed control of Fort Cataracoui, on Lake Ontario. Once in his hands, La Salle tore it down, built a stronger one of stone, and rechristened it in honour of his patron, Fort Frontenac. Moving westward, he began to clear land and to build small ships to carry the cargoes of furs he had bargained for. The first he built on Lake Erie in the year 1679 he called the _Griffin_, in which he sailed to the Green Bay Mission on Lake Michigan. There the _Griffin_ was packed with costly furs and bade God-speed on her return voyage eastward. Weeks passed, then months and years, but the _Griffin_ never came back. Her timbers and the bodies of her crew have long rotted somewhere at the bottom of one of the Great Lakes. The loss was a sad blow to La Salle; it was one of the first of that series of great misfortunes which followed him through his career until he was cruelly done to death by foul traitors in the remote forest.