He slowly made his way up the St. Lawrence, stopping here and there, where a clearing and a few log houses marked the feeble beginning of a parish and a seigniory. The settlers, though good Catholics, were too few and too poor to support a priest, and hailed the arrival of the friar with delight. He said mass, exhorted a little, as was his custom, and, on one occasion, baptized a child. At length, he reached Montreal, where the enemies of the enterprise enticed away his two canoe-men. He succeeded in finding two others, with whom he continued his voyage, passed the rapids of the upper St. Lawrence, and reached Fort Frontenac at eleven o'clock at night, of the second of November, where his brethren of the mission, Ribourde and Buisset, received him with open arms. [Footnote: Hennepin, _Description de la Louisiane_ (1683), 19. Ibid., _Voyage Curieux_ (1704), 66. Ribourde had lately arrived.] La Salle, Tonty, La Motte, and their party, who had left Quebec a few days after him, soon appeared at the fort; La Salle much fatigued and worn by the hardships of the way, or more probably by the labors and anxieties of preparation. He had no sooner arrived, than he sent fifteen men in canoes to Lake Michigan and the Illinois, to open a trade with the Indians and collect a store of provisions. There was a small vessel of ten tons in the harbor; and he ordered La Motte to sail in her for Niagara, accompanied by Hennepin. This bold, hardy, and adventurous friar, the historian of the expedition, and a conspicuous actor in it, has unwittingly painted his own portrait with tolerable distinctness. "I always," he says, "felt a strong inclination to fly from the world and live according to the rules of a pure and severe virtue; and it was with this view that I entered the Order of St. Francis." [Footnote: Hennepin, _Nouvelle Decouverte_ (1697), 8.] He then speaks of his zeal for the saving of souls, but admits that a passion for travel and a burning desire to visit strange lands had no small part in his inclination for the missions. [Footnote: Ibid., _Avant Propos_, 5.] Being in a convent in Artois, his superior sent him to Calais, at the season of the herring-fishery, to beg alms, after the practice of the Franciscans. Here and at Dunkirk, he made friends of the sailors, and was never tired of their stories. So insatiable, indeed, was his appetite for them, that "often," he says, "I hid myself behind tavern doors while the sailors were telling of their voyages. The tobacco smoke made me very sick at the stomach; but, notwithstanding, I listened attentively to all they said about their adventures at sea and their travels in distant countries. I could have passed whole days and nights in this way without eating." [Footnote: Ibid., _Voyage Curieux_ (1704), 12.]