“Sieur Joliet, whom Monsieur Talon advised me, on my arrival from France, to despatch for the discovery of the South Sea, returned three months ago, and found some very fine countries, and a navigation so easy through the beautiful rivers, that a person can go from Lake Ontario and Fort Frontenac in a bark to the Gulf of Mexico, there being only one carrying place, half a league in length, where Lake Ontario communicates with Lake Erie. A settlement could be made at this post, and another bark built on Lake Erie.... He has been within ten days’ journey of the Gulf of Mexico, and believes that water communication could be found leading to the Vermillion and California Seas, by means of the river that flows from the west, with the Grand River that he discovered, which rises from north to south, and is as large as the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec. “I send you, by my secretary, the map[481] he has made of it, and the observations he has been able to recollect, as he lost all his minutes and journals in the wreck he suffered within sight of Montreal, where, after having completed a voyage of twelve hundred leagues, he was near being drowned, and lost all his papers, and a little Indian whom he brought from those countries.” Governor Frontenac was satisfied with the importance of establishing a post on Lake Ontario, as Courcelles had suggested, and in the summer of 1673 visited the region. On the 3d of June he departed from Quebec, and at five o’clock in the afternoon of the 15th was received at Montreal amid the roar of cannon and the discharge of musketry. On the 9th of July he had reached a point supposed to be in the present town of Lisbon, in St. Lawrence County, New York, at the head of all the rapids of the St. Lawrence; and while sojourning there, at six o’clock in the evening two Iroquois canoes arrived with letters from La Salle, who two months before went into their country. After exchanging civilities with the Iroquois, and guided by them, Frontenac was led into a beautiful bay about a cannon-shot from the River Katarakoui, which so pleased him as a site for a post, that he stayed until sunset examining the situation. The next day his engineer, Sieur Raudin, was ordered to trace out the plan of a fort, and on the morning of the 14th, at daybreak, soldiers and officers with alacrity began to clear the ground, and in four days the fort was finished, with the exception of the abatis. After designating the garrison and workmen who were to remain at the post, and making La Salle the commandant, on the 27th Frontenac began his homeward voyage, about the time that Joliet began to ascend the Mississippi from the mouth of the Arkansas.[482]