The next dash into the territory of the North Star State was directed by one who has been called the most picturesque figure in American history, Réné Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle. At the age of twenty-three he broke away from the Jesuits with whom he was in training, and set sail for Canada with four hundred francs in his pocket, in the year 1663. When Frontenac came, nine years later, he found in young La Salle a man after his own heart, and sent him to France in 1674 to secure royal support for further explorations. Such support, then withheld, was vouchsafed four years later, when La Salle was again in Paris on the same errand. By a royal patent signed May 12, 1678, La Salle was authorized to extend the scope of Joliet’s exploration to the Gulf of Mexico and to pay his expenses by trade, provided he kept off the preserves of the Montreal traders. With the king’s patent in hand, it was easy to attract capital and enlist volunteers. Early in the fall of the same year, La Salle was back in Canada with his men and outfit, and soon set out for the west. After battling with a series of delays and discouragements which need not be narrated, the undaunted leader established himself in a fort built on the east bank of the Illinois River, near Peoria, Illinois, in the winter of 1680. There is no record that La Salle had been authorized to explore the upper Mississippi, but he was not the man to lose a good opportunity for lack of technical instructions. To lead an exploring party up that stream he chose Michael Accault, an experienced voyageur, “prudent, brave, and cool,” and gave him two associates: Antoine Auguelle, called the Picard du Gay, was one; the other was the now famous Father Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan friar of the Recollet branch, who came over in the same ship with La Salle in 1678. He had wandered in many lands, knew some Indian dialects, and shared La Salle’s passion for adventure.