Meantime, brave, devoted adventurers and Jesuits had been endeavouring to extend the French dominions west and south-west. It has already been mentioned that Champlain, in 1613, had been tempted to make an arduous journey to discover by means of the numerous waterways some route to China. The Great Lakes were first explored; but it was found that none of these vast sheets of water contained the tantalising secret that was interesting and engaging the attention of so many European seamen. From Lake Michigan, then called the Lake of Illinois, the discoverers moved to the narrows of Lake Huron and onward to the Fox River, following the course of which they came to Lake Winnebago. Moving still farther south, they found that a narrow strip of land divided them from another waterway, the Wisconsin, and that in turn they were destined to discover was a tributary of the mighty Mississippi. But some adventurers were more daring than their brethren, and instead of clinging to their canoes and following the course of streams, boldly skirted the territory of the dreaded Five Nations and found the "Beautiful" River, or Ohio. As early as 1635 Jean Nicollet had reached Lake Michigan, and so successful was he in his explorations of the rivers and lakes that it has been supposed that he was the original white discoverer of the Mississippi. Plausible as this would seem, historians have conclusively disproved his claims; and that honour must be divided between the two famous explorers Joliet and Marquette.[246] Louis Joliet was a layman, though connected by early training with the Jesuits; he was a Canadian born, and had been employed by the Intendant Talon to discover copper in the neighbourhood of Lake Superior. His companion, Jacques Marquette, was a Jesuit in priest's orders; he was a man of pure and saintly life, and within his delicate body there burnt a fiery spirit of endeavour to convert, a spirit which consumed him, as it were, so that his life was but a brief one in labouring for his faith. He landed in Canada in 1666; two years later he was sent forward into the almost unknown wilds and established himself on Lake Superior, teaching both the Hurons and the Illinois. It was indeed from the latter that he first heard of the Mississippi. Being forced by the savages to retire from this outpost, he and his little following took refuge in 1670 at the mission station of St Ignace, now known as Mackinaw. It was here that Marquette determined to make an expedition for the discovery of the great river of which he had heard. He has left an account of his journeyings written from memory, as unfortunately he lost his papers on his return. "I embarked with M. Joliet, who had been chosen to conduct this enterprise, on the 13th May 1673, with five other Frenchmen, in two bark canoes. We laid in some Indian corn and smoked beef for our voyage. We first took care, however, to draw from the Indians all the information we could