Shouts of _Vive le Roi_ and volleys of musketry responded to his words. Then a cross was planted beside the column, and a leaden plate buried near it, bearing the arms of France, with a Latin inscription, _Ludovicus Magnus regnat_. The weather-beaten voyagers joined their voices in the grand hymn of the _Vexilla Regis_:-- "The banners of Heaven's King advance, The mystery of the Cross shines forth;" and renewed shouts of _Vive le Roi_ closed the ceremony. On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains,--a region of savannahs and forests, sun-cracked deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the sceptre of the Sultan of Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile. CHAPTER XXII. 1682-1683. ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS. LOUISIANA.--ILLNESS OF LA SALLE.--HIS COLONY ON THE ILLINOIS.-- TOUT ST. LOUIS.--RECALL OF FRONTENAC.--LE FEVRE DE LA BARRE. --CRITICAL POSITION OF LA SALLE.--HOSTILITY OF THE NEW GOVERNOR. --TRIUMPH OF THE ADVERSE FACTION.--LA SALLE SAILS FOR FRANCE. Louisiana was the name bestowed by La Salle on the new domain of the French crown. The rule of the Bourbons in the West is a memory of the past, but the name of the Great King still survives in a narrow corner of their lost empire. The Louisiana of to-day is but a single State of the American republic. The Louisiana of La Salle stretched from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains; from the Rio Grande and the Gulf to the farthest springs of the Missouri. [Footnote: The boundaries are laid down on the great map of Franquelin, made in 1684, and preserved in the Depot des Cartes of the Marine. The line runs along the south shore of Lake Erie, and thence follows the heads of the streams flowing into Lake Michigan. It then turns north-west, and is lost in the vast unknown of the now British Territories. On the south it is drawn by the heads of the streams flowing into the Gulf, as far west as Mobile, after which it follows the shore of the Gulf to a little south of the Rio Grande, then runs west, north-west, and finally north along the range of the Rocky Mountains.]