Such a brief and fruitless effort to reach the Great South Sea could not have escaped the notice of historians. It is not probable that his foreman, Charles Thoulamion, or his surgeon, Roussilier, (_Histoire Colonie Francais_, vol. 3, p. 290) were among those wanting in courage to follow him. Some soldiers were of the party, furnished by Talon, who would be likely to remain by force of military discipline. There are many threads of this tangled skein, which can not yet be drawn out. In the first volume of the Margry documents (pages 371–78) may be seen a long recital by a friend of the Abbé Galinée, already referred to, whose name is a subject of conjecture, but presumed by Mr. Parkman to have been the second Prince of Conti, Armand de Bourbon, a friend of La Salle, seventeen or eighteen years of age, purporting to be the substance of conversations with La Salle, which must have taken place as late as 1677, when he was in France. One portion of this paper is styled a “Life of La Salle,” a large part of which is occupied by his troubles with the Jesuits. “He (La Salle) left France at twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, in 1665, well instructed in matters in the new world, with the design of attempting new discoveries. After having been some time in Canada he acquired some knowledge of the languages, and traveled northward, where he found nothing worthy of his attention, and resolved to turn southward; and having advanced to a village of savages on the Genesee, where there was a Jesuit, he hoped to find guides, etc.” * * * * * “M. de la Salle continued his route from ‘Tenouatoua’ _upon a river which goes from east to west_, and passed to Onondaga (Onontague), then to six or seven leagues below Lake Erie; and having reached longitude 280° or 283°, and to latitude 41°, found a sault, which falls toward the west into a low, marshy country, covered with dry trees, of which some are still standing. He was compelled to take the land, and following a height, which led him very far, he found savages who told him that very far from there the same river, which was lost in the low, marshy country, reunited in one bed. He continued his way, but as the fatigue was great, twenty-three or twenty-four men, whom he had brought thus far, left him all in one night, regained the river, and saved themselves, some in New Holland and others in New England. He found himself alone at four hundred leagues (twelve hundred miles) from his home, where he failed not to return, reascending the river, and living by hunting, upon herbs and upon what the savages gave him, whom he met on the way. After _some time he made a second attempt, on the same river_, which he left below Lake Erie, making a portage of six or seven leagues (eighteen or twenty-one miles), to embark on this lake, which he traversed toward the north” into lakes Huron and Michigan, and thence to the Illinois.