In a little craft of some sixty tons, he ascended the rapid river above the Falls of Niagara, amidst difficulties which we can but little understand, and gained the broad expanse of Lake Erie; thence boldly steering westward, he came upon the narrow river or strait of Detroit, crossed the lucid waters of Lake St. Clair, and was at last rewarded by the grand discovery of Lake Huron. Still boldly pursuing his course westward, La Salle at last came to Lake Michigan, whence in company with Father Hennepin, his jesuit historian, he undertook the feat of penetrating to the head waters of the Mississippi. Nor did he stop when he reached the mystic stream; he trusted himself to the mighty flood, and never turned round or bated breath till he floated out, 2000 miles below, on the turbid waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Whilst the hierarchy of France were busy founding bishoprics, building churches, and establishing seminaries, the English, distracted by internal convulsions, left their American colonies pretty much to themselves. France sent out governors, councillors, and bishops to New France; England dispatched her Puritans, adventurers, younger sons, Catholic cavaliers, and Nonconformists; but the natives were sure to suffer, no matter in what form the colony was ruled, or of what Europeans it was composed. Terrible diseases, although known in Europe for two hundred years previously, according to contemporary writers, appeared suddenly, and without European communication, among the indigenes, and ravaged the miserable tribes, already decimated by intestine war and ruin. Christians were naturally held accountable for all the evil; and for a large part indeed they were.