In early life he had renounced his inheritance and devoted himself to the service of the Church, but he soon left the order of Jesuits which he had entered, because, as Mr. Parkman surmises, he did not relish being all his life the moved and not the mover; because he could not give up his individuality and remain one of the great body, all of whom were compelled to march in a track pointed out to them by a superior. It is pleasant to know that he left the order with good feelings on both sides. In 1667, we find the young man already entered upon the career of adventure in which the rest of his life was to be spent. He had sailed to Canada, the place of attraction for ambitious French youth, and there he remained several years, making the familiar acquaintance of the Indians and learning their language, while he was dreaming, like many others, of the passage to China through the rivers that came down from the westward. He had looked, too, in his vivid imagination over the vast plains of the great West, and had become filled with brilliant visions of an empire that he hoped some day to see established there for France. We have already learned how France took possession of the region, at this very period. In such state of mind, La Salle sailed back to France in the autumn of 1674. He was well received and the next year returned, ennobled, and more than ever determined to push his grand scheme for the acquisition of the great West. His was no plan to indulge in theatrical spectacles, but to take actual possession. Year after year we see him steadily pursuing his single plan. He thinks nothing of crossing the Atlantic, of pushing his course through the trackless woods, or of paddling his frail canoe over the wild waters of the broad lakes. Indians did not daunt him by their cruelty, nor wild beasts affright him by their numbers and ferocity. Onward, ever onward, He pressed. In the year 1680, we find him taking possession by actual occupation, of the region now comprising the State of Illinois. It was the first time that civilization had asserted itself there. La Salle built a fort, and, in memory of the trials of the way, called it _Crevecoeur_, which signified Broken-heart; but it did not testify to any broken courage on his part;--rather it was a monument to the obstacles that his persistence had surmounted.