Frontenac landed at Quebec in 1672 as governor of New France, full of plans for the development of the country, the extension of its boundaries, and the exploration of “the fabled West that is charted dim but certain in the volume of the breast,” as our own Bliss Carman phrases it. He found among the coureurs des bois (runners of the woods) a native Canadian, Louis Joliet, the son of a wagon-maker in Quebec, a man reputed to be courageous, enterprising, of good nature and endowed with common sense. Him he commissioned to go up to Sault Ste. Marie and thence explore for the great South Sea. This was an exceedingly wise choice and due to the advice of the Intendant, M. Talon, a very able man, who knew of Joliet’s previous exploits. Some three years previously the governor of the time, Courcelles, sent Joliet to learn the truth about the reputed copper deposits on Lake Superior. He went by the great highway of the Ottawa river, Lake Nipissing and French River to Georgian Bay, and thence to the Sault. On his return he went down Lake Huron from the Sault through what we now call St. Clair and Detroit, and then along the north shore of Lake Erie and up the Grand River. The reason for leaving the lake at this point was the fear of his Indian guide for the warlike tribes at the end of the lake. Joliet was the first white man known to have passed through Lake Erie and this lake was the last of the Great Lakes to be discovered. Leaving the Grand River he was making his way eastward when in an Indian village in what is now known as the Beverley Swamp, near the present city of Galt, he met La Salle, Galinée and his Sulpician companion, Father Dollier. La Salle, greatly impressed by the dashing Joliet, who was much more to his taste than his priestly companions, turned back with him.