Arkansas rivers, and making visits to many tribes along their course, by whom they were well received. As they reached the end of their journey, on the 6th of April, sixty-two days from the time of entering the river, they saw that the river divided into three broad channels, or mouths, of which La Salle followed the western one, Dautray the eastern, and Tonti the middle one. After La Salle had located, in his canoe, the nearby borders of the great sea, or gulf (of Mexico) which spread before them, the three parties reassembled (April 9th, 1682) at a spot where a column was erected and near it a plate was buried bearing the arms inscribed with the words of France, and “_Louis Le Grande, Roy de France et de Navarre, Règne, Le Neuvième, Avril, 1682_.” Then while the _Te Deum_, the _Exaudéat_ and the _Domine Salvum fac Regem_ were chanted, the volleys of musketry discharged by the men under arms, with cries of “Vive le Roi;” a cross was planted beside the column and Le Sieur de Salle, sword in hand, proclaimed the new-found territory as _Louisiana_, and Louis XIV as its King and rightful Lord. The vast domain thus secured, after the manner of those times, to the French Crown, extended from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Rio Grande and the Gulf of Mexico to the farthest springs of the Missouri; but the name—Louisiana—which he gave it is now confined to a single commonwealth in the great sisterhood of states forming the United States of America. Now, in the culmination of his triumph he was seized by an illness so severe as to threaten his life; and was unable to reach Fort Miami, even by slow stages, before August, and to rejoin Tonti, whom he had dispatched with news of his success to Canada. It seems to have been about this time that he began to abandon the difficult access which he had hitherto found, through Canada, with all its dangers and enemies, both whites and Indians; and to reach the region of his hopes and toils more directly by way of the Gulf of Mexico and the mouth of the Mississippi. His plans of descending that river by means of a vessel had twice been thwarted by disasters which proved its futility; and to attempt his purpose with canoes would be fraught with much difficulty and an enormous expense. He purposed now, in view of all his past experiences, to form on the banks of the Illinois a colony of French and Indians, as a place of storage of the furs which could be gathered by the various Western tribes; and as a defense against the Iroquois, who were alike inimical to the French and their Illinois allies. And rumors of an impending renewal of attack upon these allies urged him to greater speed; so he and Tonti repaired at once to “Starved Rock,” before mentioned.[20] This was a cliff, rising to a height of 125 feet, on the southern bank of the Illinois, presenting on three sides a sheer perpendicular wall, and on its other side a deep ravine; and it was accessible only by a difficult climb from behind.