"About this time, in the course of the evolution of new routes leading to the Mississippi, occurred the first use of the Wabash river by white explorers. This stream was occasionally reached in the earliest period by leaving Lake Michigan on the St. Joseph river and then by a short portage to the headwaters of a northern branch of the Wabash, but the more important way to reach it was by the 'Miami river of Lake Erie' and a short portage. Of the five great portage routes,[68] this was the last one to come into general use by the whites.... Many have tried to trace La Salle's voyage of 1670 by the Wabash river. Joliet's map of 1674, which locates La Salle's route by way of Lake Erie and the Wabash, has been used in support of this contention. But the route laid down is clearly a later interpolation and adds nothing directly to the argument. It is, however, most significant that within a few years La Salle had become in some manner fully aware of this Wabash route and the advantages it offered. During the years that he was in command at Ft. Frontenac, he appears to have been evolving great schemes for appeasing the Iroquois and for opening up an easy channel of trade to the Mississippi Valley by the Maumee and Wabash; but by 1682 he seems to have temporarily abandoned this plan, 'because,' he says, 'I could no longer go to the Illinois but by the Lakes Huron and Illinois, as the other routes which I have discovered by the head of Lake Erie and by the southern coast of the same, have become too dangerous by frequent encounters with the Iroquois who are always on that shore.' La Salle's description of the territory between Lake Erie and Lake Michigan indicates a familiarity with this region scarcely possible save from personal observation. In a letter written November 9, 1680, he says, 'There is at the end of Lake Erie ten leagues below the strait a river by which we could shorten the route to the Illinois very much. It is navigable to canoes to within two leagues of the route now in use.'[69]... his [La Salle's] representations were the first to direct the attention of the French to the regions south and west of Lake Erie."[70]