The publication last year of a revised edition of Mr. Parkman's "Discovery of the Great West" has made the compilation of a sketch of La Salle's life a very easy task. Mr. Parkman has told about everything that is worth telling--indeed, every important fact that is known--with reference to the great explorer; and for the future, any brief account of his life must necessarily be little more than a condensation of Mr. Parkman's book. "It is the glory and the misfortune of France," says M. Guizot, "to always lead the van in the march of civilization, without having the wit to profit by the discoveries and the sagacious boldness of her children. On the unknown roads which she has opened to human enterprise she has too often left the fruits to be gathered by nations less inventive, but more persevering." The life of the ardent explorer whose achievements form the subject of this sketch affords an apt commentary on the text of the eminent French historian above quoted. Long prior to the date of La Salle's discoveries, Samuel de Champlain had dreamed of and fruitlessly sought for a continuous water passage across the American continent, and hoped to thereby establish a profitable commerce with the Indies, China, and Japan. La Salle, following in Champlain's footsteps, and dreaming the same wild dreams, spent a great part of his life in attempting to do what his great predecessor had failed in accomplishing. His discoveries, however, extended over a much broader field. La Salle may practically be said to have discovered the Great West. He crossed the Mississippi, which the Jesuits had been the first to reach, and pushed on to the far south, constructing forts in the midst of the most savage districts, and taking possession of Louisiana in the name of King Louis XIV. Abandoned by many of his comrades, and losing the most faithful of them by death; attacked by savages, betrayed by his own hirelings, thwarted in his projects by his enemies and his rivals, he at last met an inglorious death by assassination, just as he was about to make his way back to New France. He left the field open after him to the innumerable explorers of every nation and every language who have since left their mark on those measureless tracts. If but little benefit accrued to France from his discoveries, the fault was not his. He has left an imperishable record on the page of American history, and as a discoverer his name occupies a place in early Canadian annals second only--_if_ second--to that of Champlain himself.