[1] From "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West." By permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co. Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was born in Rouen, in France, in 1643, and assassinated in Texas in 1687. He was of burgher descent, had been educated by the Jesuits, with whom for a time he was connected, and first went to Canada in 1666, discovering the Ohio River in 1669, and the upper waters of the Illinois in 1671. In 1679 he established a fort on the Illinois River, near the present Peoria, intending it as a starting-point for an expedition down the Mississippi. The expedition here described, organized in 1681, comprized, beside La Salle and Tonti, thirty Frenchmen and a band of Indians. It reached the Mississippi by way of the Chicago portage and the Illinois River, and arrived at the mouth in 1682. In 1684 La Salle attempted to found a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi. Starting from France, he made a landing in Matagorda Bay, Texas, and near a branch of the Trinity River, in Texas, was assassinated by some of his disaffected followers. His patent of nobility dates from 1673. [2] A reference to the loss of the _Griffin_, which he had built at the mouth of Cayuga Creek, near Buffalo, the first vessel ever built on the Great Lakes, and which was lost on Lake Michigan soon afterward. [3] Tony tells us he lost his hand in Sicily, where it was "shot off by a grenade." END OF VOL. I