The Lake County stump has about twice the number of layers we should expect, and which would carry the chopping to a period before the landing of Columbus. Botanists explain this by the exceptional cases where there is a double layer in a year. If La Salle and his party spent two or three years exploring and trading in furs in the lake country, they might well be the authors of these ancient cuttings. There must have been several hundreds of them, or we should not have met with so many at this late period. Any person examining the pieces in the Western Reserve Historical Society museum will be convinced they are not the work of Indians. The honor of the first exploration of Ohio has long been claimed by the French for their countryman, Robert Cavalier de La Salle, but the details of this exploration were so meager, its date so doubtful, and the extent of his travels so uncertain, that some historians were not inclined to give credence to his claims. A romantic mystery still envelopes his movements in the country between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, which it was hoped the papers of M. Pierre Margry would dissipate, and thus place La Salle on record in full and clear terms. If this cannot be effected by the zeal and industry of M. Margry, during a life work in search of manuscripts relating to La Salle, I fear that we must relinquish the hope of a satisfactory solution. DeCourcelles and Talon, who were respectively governor and intendant in New France, sent out several parties of discovery between 1665 and 1680. They had two principal objects in view: the discovery of copper, and a route to China through the Great Southern Sea. In a memoir to the king, dated Quebec, October 10, 1670, (New York Colonial Documents, page 64) Talon writes: “Since my arrival I have despatched persons of resolution, who promise to penetrate farther than has ever been done to the west and northwest of Canada, and others to the southwest and south.” These parties were instructed to keep journals, reply to instructions, take possession of the country formally, and were expected to be absent without news for about two years. After all these precautions, a distressing fatality overtook most of their letters, field notes, reports and maps. Joliet was nearly in sight of Montreal on his return in 1674 from the Mississippi River, when his canoe was capsized in the rapids, he was nearly drowned, and every paper was lost. Of La Salle’s memoranda, covering the years 1669 to 1673, nothing has been recovered.