Meantime, Joliet hastened back to Montreal to make his report to the governor. His canoe upset, and his plans and papers were lost, but the news he brought made the French anxious to secure the land by building trading forts along the rivers that had been explored. It is because Marquette and Joliet were the first white men who visited this part of the country, that their names have been given to a port and county at the northern end of Lake Michigan, and to a town in Illinois. They were such bold explorers that beautiful monuments have also been erected in their honor. XLVIII. LA SALLE'S ADVENTURES. In the meantime, another French explorer, La Salle (lah sahl´), had also been at work, and had discovered the Ohio River. In 1679, six years after Marquette and Joliet sailed down the Mississippi, La Salle came to the Illinois River, where he built Fort Crèvecœur (crāv´ker) ("heartbreak"), near the place occupied by the present city of Pe-o´ri-a. La Salle next went back to Canada for supplies, and reached Montreal only by means of much paddling and a long tramp of a thousand miles. But he left orders with a priest, named Hen´ne-pin, to explore the upper part of the Mississippi River. Father Hennepin, therefore, went down the Illinois, and then paddled upstream to the Falls of St. An´tho-ny, in 1680. His adventures were very exciting, for he fell into the hands of the Sioux (soo) Indians. Long after he got back to Europe, he claimed to have been the first to sail all the way down the Mississippi; but this honor is now generally believed to belong to La Salle. When La Salle came back to Crèvecœur a year later, he found his fort in ruins; most of his men had deserted. At first he thought that his few faithful followers had been killed by the Indians, but his fears were quieted when they joined him at Michilimackinac. In 1681 La Salle again set out, with his lieutenant Ton´ty and a band of Indians, for the southern end of Lake Michigan. Sailing up the Chicago, he had his canoes carried across to the Illinois River. It was the Indians who taught the white men thus to pass from one stream to another, and to avoid falls and rapids. These carrying places received from the French explorers the name of "portage," by which they are still known, even though no one now thinks of using them for that purpose. Sailing down the Illinois and Mississippi, La Salle reached the mouth of the latter stream in 1682. As was the custom with explorers of every nation, he solemnly took possession, in the name of his king, of the river and the land it drained. This territory, as you can see on your map, included most of the region between the Rocky and Alleghany Mountains, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico; it was called Lou-i-si-a´na, in honor of Louis XIV. of France.