In the midsummer following he made his way with a sailboat and two canoes up the Mississippi, reaching Fort Snelling September 19. He doubtless knew where he was going, for without delay he turned into the Minnesota River, which he followed to the mouth of the Mah-ka-to or Blue Earth. A short distance above, the latter stream receives the Le Sueur. At their junction he built a fort to which he gave the name of a treasury official of Paris who had supported him, “Fort L’Huillier.” The spot has been identified by a local archæologist. He was obliged to pacify with presents the Sioux who were displeased because he did not build at the mouth of the Minnesota. His company passed a comfortable winter, but before it was over they had to come down to buffalo beef without salt. Some of them could put away six pounds along with four bowls of broth daily. In the spring Le Sueur departed for Biloxi, with his shallop loaded with bluish green earth taken from a bluff near his fort. He never saw Minnesota again, and no later explorer has rediscovered his mine. The state geologist has not found the least trace of copper in the region. The last decade of the seventeenth century was one of discouragement for old France and new. Louis XIV, decrepit and bankrupt, dominated by Madame Maintenon and a group of ecclesiastics, had, by revoking the Edict of Nantes in 1685, driven three hundred thousand and more of the most industrious and skillful artisans and tradesmen of France into exile. The dragonades, countenanced even by such men as Fénelon and Bossuet, had spread ruin throughout whole provinces. Foreign wars along with domestic convulsions had almost beggared the kingdom. Frontenac had died in office in 1698, and Canadian affairs, fallen into less capable hands, were languishing. There was lack of men and money to protect the northwest trade. It needed protection. The English, holding the Iroquois in alliance, had pushed their trade into the Ohio valley and the lower peninsula of Michigan. The Sacs and Foxes of the Illinois country, old allies of the French, had broken away, and closed all the roads from the lakes to the Mississippi unless that of the St. Croix. For these reasons the Canadian government had in 1699 withdrawn the garrison from Mackinaw, abandoned all posts farther west, and ordered the concentration of Indian trade at Montreal. It was not till after the war of the Spanish Succession was closed by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, that any thought could be taken for the revival of trade and missions in the Mississippi valley. England might at that time have stripped France of all her transatlantic holdings, but contented herself with Newfoundland and the posts on Hudson’s Bay.