But how was La Salle employed in the following year? The same memoir has its solution to the problem. By this it appears that the indefatigable explorer embarked on Lake Erie, ascended the Detroit to Lake Huron, coasted the unknown shores of Michigan, passed the Straits of Michillimackinac, and leaving Green Bay behind him, entered what is described as an incomparably larger bay, but which was evidently the southern portion of Lake Michigan. Thence he crossed to a river flowing westward,--evidently the Illinois,--and followed it until it was joined by another river flowing from the northwest to the southeast. By this, the Mississippi only can be meant; and he is reported to have said that he descended it to the thirty-sixth degree of latitude; where he stopped, assured that it discharged itself not into the Gulf of California, but into the Gulf of Mexico; and resolved to follow it thither at a future day, when better provided with men and supplies. [Footnote: The memoir,-- after stating, as above, that he entered Lake Huron, doubled the peninsula of Michigan, and passed La Baye des Puants (Green Bay),--says, "Il reconnut une baye incomparablement plus large; au fond de laquelle vers l'ouest il trouva un tres-beau havre et au fond de ce havre un fleuve qui va de l'est a l'ouest. Il suivit ce fleuve, et estant parvenu jusqu'environ le 280me degre de longitude et le 39me de latitude, il trouva un autre fleuve qui se joignant au premier coulait du nordouest au sud-est, et il suivit ce fleuve jusqu'au 36me degre de latitude." The "tres-beau havre" may have been the entrance of the River Chicago, whence, by an easy portage, he might have reached the Des Plaines branch of the Illinois. We shall see that he took this course in his famous exploration of 1682. The Intendant Talon announces in his despatches of this year that he had sent La Salle southward and westward to explore.] The first of these statements,--that relating to the Ohio,--confused, vague, and in great part incorrect as it certainly is, is nevertheless well sustained as regards one essential point. La Salle himself, in a memorial addressed to Count Frontenac in 1677, affirms that he discovered the Ohio, and descended it as far as to a fall which obstructed it. [Footnote: The following are his words (he speaks of himself in the third person): "L'annee 1667, et les suivantes, il fit divers voyages avec beaucoup de depenses, dans lesquels il decouvrit le premier beaucoup de pays au sud des grands lacs, et _entre autres la grande riviere d'Ohio_; il la suivit jusqu'a un endroit ou elle tombe de fort haut dans de vastes marais, a la hauteur de 37 degres, apres avoir ete grossie par une autre riviere fort large qui vient du nord; et toutes ces eaux se dechargent selon toutes les apparences dans le Golfe du Mexique."