Leaving Tonty in charge of his interests, La Salle sailed for France where he had a strong friend at court in Frontenac. As it happened, Spain and France were playing at the game of checkmating each other; and it pleased the French King to restore La Salle's forts and to give the Canadian explorer four ships to colonize the Mississippi by way of the Gulf of Mexico. This was to oust Spain from her ancient claim on the gulf; but Beaujeu, the naval commander of the expedition, was not in sympathy with La Salle. Beaujeu was a noble by birth; La Salle, only a noble of the merchant classes. The two bickered and quarreled from the first. By some blunder, when the ships reached the Gulf of Mexico, laden with colonists, in December of 1684, they missed the mouth of the Mississippi and anchored off Texas. The main ship sailed back to France. Two others were wrecked, and La Salle in desperation, after several trips seeking the Mississippi, resolved to go overland by way of the Mississippi valley and the Illinois to obtain aid in Canada for his colonists. All the world knows what happened. Near Trinity River in Texas some of his men mutinied. Early in the morning of the 19th of March, 1687, La Salle left camp with a friar and Indian to ascertain what was delaying the plotters, who had not returned from the hunt. Suddenly La Salle seemed overwhelmed by a great sadness. He spoke of death. A moment later, catching sight of one of the delinquents, he had called out. A shot rang from the underbush; another shot; and La Salle reeled forward dead, with a bullet wound gaping in his forehead. The body of the man who had won a new empire for France was stripped and left naked, a prey to the foxes and carrion birds. So perished Robert Cavelier de La Salle, aged forty-four. Nor need the fate of the mutineers be told here. The fate of mutineers is the same the world over. Having slain their {142} commander, they fell on one another and perished, either at one another's hands or among the Indians. As for the colonists of men, women, and girls left in Texas, the few who were not massacred by the Indians fell into the hands of the Spaniards. La Salle's debts at the time of his death were what would now be half a million dollars. His life had ended in what the world calls ruin, but France entered into his heritage. With the passing of Robert de La Salle passes the heroic age of Canada,--its age of youth's dream. Now was to come its manhood,--its struggles, its wars, its nation building, working out a greater destiny than any dream of youth. {143} CHAPTER VIII FROM 1679 TO 1713 Radisson quarrels with company--Up Labrador coast--Radisson captures his rivals--Radisson ordered back to England--Death of Radisson--Jan Peré the spy--The raid on Moose Factory--Sargeant besieged