The plan met instant favor. To enable La Salle to carry it out, four vessels were given him instead of the two he asked for. A naval officer by the name of Beaujeu was assigned to command them at sea. La Salle set himself to work with his usual energy. Soldiers, priests and colonists, arms, munitions and stores, were provided in sufficient number or quantity to put the colony on its feet at once. Long before the ships were ready to sail from Rochefort, La Salle and Beaujeu had quarrelled. Beaujeu overrated himself, and underrated La Salle. Often betrayed by those he trusted most, La Salle's naturally suspicious nature led him to distrust every one, above all Beaujeu, who constantly ridiculed him and his schemes to his friends. So La Salle's reserve gave offence to Beaujeu, who grew sulky, and was at no pains to conceal his dislike for the whole affair. Here then at the very outset the seeds of disaster were sowed. It was under such unpromising conditions that the fleet set sail in July, 1684, for the Gulf of Mexico. Three of the vessels reached St. Domingo in two months, with a large number of sick on board, of whom La Salle himself was one. The fourth had been taken at sea by Spanish buccaneers, thus depriving the colonists of the tools and provisions with which she was loaded. Upon La Salle's recovery from what came near proving a fatal illness, the fleet again put to sea, though it was now November, and much precious time had been lost. Steering westward into the Gulf, they made their landfall on New Year's Day, but when La Salle went on shore to look about him, he could discover no sign of the great river he was in search of. The colonists were upon a low, flat coast, without natural landmarks to guide them, or knowledge of the longitude of the place they were seeking, or of the currents which the Gulf sets in motion. No wonder, then, that La Salle failed to recognize any part of the inhospitable coast before him. Finding no trace of the Mississippi, and as the failure to do so was every day productive of disputes between himself and Beaujeu, La Salle resolved to land where he was, notwithstanding his belief that he had gone too far to the westward. He was, in fact, at the time of taking this resolution, on the coast of Texas, more than four hundred miles from the Mississippi. Almost at the moment of landing, La Salle's storeship, which contained the greater part of his provisions, grounded, and became a wreck; it is said, through the carelessness or treachery of her master, who also was on bad terms with La Salle. Indeed, from first to last La Salle's enemies seem to have exerted themselves to ruin him with a zeal that, if honestly employed, would easily have insured the success of all his plans.