La Salle always saw the influence of the Jesuits in the disasters that befell him. His repeated assertion, that they wished to establish themselves in the Valley of the Mississippi, receives confirmation from, a document entitled, _Memoire sur la proposition a faire parles R. Peres Jesuites pour la decouverte des environs de la riviere du Mississipi et pour voir si elle est navigable jusqu'a la mer_. It is a memorandum of propositions to be made to the minister Seignelay, and was apparently put forward as a feeler, before making the propositions in form. It was written after the return of Beaujeu to France, and before La Salle's death became known. It intimates that the Jesuits were entitled to precedence in the Valley of the Mississippi, as having first explored it. It affirms that _La Salle had made a blunder and landed his colony, not at the mouth of the river, but at another place,_ and it asks permission to continue the work in which he has failed. To this end it petitions for means to build a vessel at St. Louis of the Illinois, together with canoes, arms, tents, tools, provisions, and merchandise for the Indians; and it also asks for La Salle's maps and papers, and for those of Beaujeu. On their part, it pursues, the Jesuits will engage to make a complete survey of the river, and return an exact account of its inhabitants, its plants, and its other productions. How did the Jesuits learn that La Salle had missed the mouths of the Mississippi? He himself did not know it when Beaujeu left him; for he dated his last letter to the minister from the "Western Mouth of the Mississippi." I have given the proof that Beaujeu, after leaving him, found the true mouth of the river, and made a map of it (_ante,_ p. 380, _note_). Now Beaujeu was in close relations with the Jesuits, for he mentions in one of his letters that his wife was devotedly attached to them. These circumstances, taken together, may justify the suspicion that Jesuit influence had some connection with Beaujeu's treacherous desertion of La Salle; and that this complicity had some connection with the uneasiness of Allouez when told that La Salle was on his way to the Illinois.] Once before, in 1679, Allouez had fled from the Illinois on hearing of the approach of La Salle. The season was late, and they were eager to hasten forward that they might reach Quebec in time to return, to France in the autumn ships. There was not a day to lose. They bade farewell to Bellefontaine, from whom, as from all others, they had concealed the death of La Salle, and made their way across the country to Chicago. Here they were detained a week by a storm; and when at length they embarked in a canoe furnished by Bellefontaine, the tempest soon forced them to put back. On this, they abandoned their design, and returned to Fort St. Louis, to the astonishment of its inmates.