The Sulpicians had been encouraged by Talon in order to eclipse and hold in check the Jesuits. They were eager to send their missionaries to the new realm of this Great River, and hurried Dollier de Casson down to Quebec to obtain Intendant Talon's permission. There, curiously enough, Dollier de Casson met Cavalier de La Salle, the shy young seigneur of La Chine, intent on almost the same aim,--to explore the Great River. Where the Sulpicians had granted him his seigniory above Montreal he had built a fort, which soon won the nickname of La Chine,--China,--because its young master was continually entertaining Iroquois Indians within the walls, to question them of the Great River, which might lead to China. Governor Courcelle and Intendant Talon ordered the priest and young seigneur to set out together on their explorations. The Sulpicians were to bear all expenses, buying back La Salle's lands to enable him to outfit canoes with the money. Father Galinée, who understood map making, accompanied Dollier de Casson, and the expedition of seven birch canoes, with three white men in each, and two dugouts with Seneca Indians, who had been visiting La Salle, set out from Montreal on July 6, 1669. Not a leader in the party was over thirty-five years of age. Dollier de Casson, the big priest, was only thirty-three and La Salle barely twenty-six. Corn meal was carried as food. For the rest, they were to depend on chance shots. With {129} numerous portages, keeping to the south shore of the St. Lawrence because that was best known to the Seneca guides, the canoes passed up Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis and glided through the sylvan fairyland of the Thousand Islands, coming out in August on Lake Ontario, "which," says Galinée, "appeared to us like a great sea." Striking south, they appealed to the Seneca Iroquois for guides to the Ohio, but the Senecas were so intent on torturing some prisoners recently captured, that they paid no heed to the appeal. A month was wasted, and the white men proceeded with Indian slaves for guides, still along the south shore of the lake. [Illustration: GALINÉE'S MAP OF THE GREAT LAKES, 1669 (The next oldest chart to that of Champlain)] At the mouth of Niagara River they could hear the far roar of the famous falls, which Indian legend said "fell over rocks twice the height of the highest pine tree." The turbulent torrent of the river could not be breasted, so they did not see the falls, but rounded on up Lake Ontario to the region now near the city of Hamilton. Here they had prepared to portage overland to some stream that would bring them down to Lake Erie, when, to their amazement, they learned from a passing Indian camp that two Frenchmen were on their way down this very lake from searching copper mines on Lake Superior.