La Salle now pushed his impetuous campaign, showing as much foresight as daring in this conception. To hold the golden West in fee three important projects at once demanded attention: fitting out two ships, one for Lake Ontario and one for the upper Niagara River and the lakes from which its waters came, and the acquiring at some proper rendezvous of the first invoice of furs. A brigantine of ten tons was building simultaneously with Fort Frontenac, and in the fall of the year (1678) was ready for its cargo of material for a sister-ship to be built above the great falls. A party in canoes, carrying some six thousand francs' worth of goods, had gone forward to the further lakes to engage and secure from the Indian tribes provisions for the expedition and a consignment of furs for the homeward voyage. [Illustration: R. Réné Cavelier, Sieur De La Salle.] On November 18th, the brigantine with its singular freight weighed anchor and sped from sight of La Salle and the watchers at Fort Frontenac; the party was under the temporal command of Sieur la Motte de Lussière and the spiritual guidance of the famous historian Father Hennepin, "who belonged," writes one scholar, "to that class of writers who speak the truth by accident"; of him La Salle generously said that he wrote more in conformity to his wishes than his knowledge. After a rough voyage this unknown craft entered "the beautiful river Niagara," as Hennepin truthfully stated, on St. Nicholas's Day, December 6th and the _Te Deum Laudamus_ was sung feelingly by the crew, which had barely escaped shipwreck near the mouth of Humber River. Here, near the mouth of the Niagara River, La Salle had planned to build a fort to bear the name Fort Conti in honour of his chief patron, the Prince of Conti; Lake Erie he had already named Lac de Conti. "It is situated," he wrote Conti, before it was built, "near that great cataract, more than a hundred and twenty toises [780 feet] in height, by which the lakes of higher elevation precipitate themselves into Lake Frontenac." A party of Senecas welcomed the little party, listening wonderingly to their anthem, supplying them with no end of white fish which they had come to catch here, living the while in a sort of a village near by, comprising probably a few huts erected for temporary purposes. It is possible these dwellings were of a more permanent character; at any rate Seneca sovereignty was assured, as the Frenchmen discovered just as soon as post-holes for Fort Conti were being dug. Concerning this, as well as the other features of this early Niagara River history, the record of Father Hennepin is about our only source of information; let us, therefore, quote from his _A New Discovery_ concerning Frontenac and Niagara days: