and to follow the swelling flood of the mightiest of rivers to its bourne in some mighty sea. Such a man will have the defects of his qualities, and La Salle was neither devoid of jealousy nor incapable of injustice; and he was a somewhat hard taskmaster. Possessed himself of iron nerve and unbending resolution, and sustained by visions of high accomplishment, he expected more from average men than they were altogether capable of rendering. More than once some of his followers deserted him. One attempt was made at Fort Frontenac to poison him; and finally he met his death at the hand of an assassin, a member of his own party, in that far southern region which he had added to the domain of France. Frontenac's personal relations with La Salle are not very clearly defined. He was certainly favourable to him at first. The two men were much alike in their attitude towards the ecclesiastical power; and both showed a preference for the Recollet order, two members of which La Salle maintained at the fort. Frontenac also approved of La Salle's plans of discovery in the west and south, as tending to the extension of the French dominions and the glory of the French name, and possibly also as furnishing a counterpoise to the growing influence of the Jesuits among the western Indians. There is nothing, however, to show that he followed the later movements of the great explorer with any particular sympathy. Du Lhut was a man of a different type. He did not possess the vaulting ambition, nor perhaps the talent for organization, of La Salle; but he discovered a vast stretch of new territory in what is now the western part of New Ontario, and along the course of the Assiniboine; and, so far as skill in the management of the native races was concerned he was probably superior to the more romantic explorer. No man was more successful in upholding French prestige amongst the Indian tribes. It was just before La Salle returned from France in the autumn of 1678 that Du Lhut, in somewhat clandestine fashion, slipped off to the West. Those were the days in which the _coureur de bois_ difficulty was at its height; and, upon arriving at Sault Ste. Marie, he wrote to Frontenac in a rather deprecatory tone as if sensible of the doubtful legality of his position, but pointed out the advantages that would accrue from entering into relations with the North Western Indians. About a year later he presided over a great meeting of the tribes on the site of the important city which now bears his name (according to one spelling of it); established peace between communities that had long been at war; and obtained the promise of the important tribe of the Nadessioux to direct their trade in future to Montreal. This was eminently useful work, and gained for its author the full sympathy of Frontenac. Nevertheless, on his return to Quebec in the following year (1680), he was imprisoned for violation of the king's regulations, in all probability at the instance of the vigilant M.