Soon, for the third time, the persistent adventurer set his face towards the west. His company now included twenty-three Frenchmen and eighteen Indians, equipped with all the care his former experiences could suggest. Summer had gone before his plans were completed; but all seasons were alike to La Salle, and in the early autumn his expedition began. Lake Huron was reached in October, Fort Miami a few weeks later, and on the 6th of February their canoes glided out of the Illinois into the eddying current of the Mississippi.
Down past the turbid Missouri they swept, and beyond the mouth of the Ohio. Every day brought them newer signs of spring, and every day saw the spirits of La Salle rising at the happy consciousness of fulfilled ambition. On the 13th of March they encamped near the mouth of the Arkansas, and three hundred miles below they were well received by the Natchez Indians. On the 6th of April the great river divided before them into three wide channels: La Salle followed that of the west; Tonty took the middle course; and D'Autray descended the eastern passage. On the 19th of April the three parties met on the Gulf of Mexico. A cross bearing the arms of France was set up, and the country was named Louisiana after the Grand Monarch.
The Louisiana of to-day conveys no idea of the vast tract of country defined by La Salle's proclamation of 1682. To the explorer it meant the extent of the mighty continent, stretching westward from the Alleghanies to the Rockies, and north and south from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. All former accessions of territory were small beside it, and to his eyes it seemed the fertile Canaan of French enterprise. Yet the very magnitude of this new success made for the undoing of New France, by scattering her feeble forces over the length and breadth of a continent and distending her line of defence so far that it could be easily pierced. La Salle, however, was driven irresistibly forward by the hot ambition which ruled him. His romantic vision pictured a greater New France in the valley of the Mississippi, governed by himself--a prosperous trading colony shipping cargoes of beaver-skins directly to Europe by way of the Gulf of Mexico. Quebec, however, was the home of his enemies. His former reverses had shattered the faith of creditors, while the Canadian merchants envied him the monopoly of the Western trade. They heaped calumny upon his enterprises, labelled him a _coureur de bois_, and persistently wrecked his schemes. Final success enabled La Salle in a measure to disregard these annoyances; but when the new Governor, La Barre, went the length of seizing Fort Frontenac--thus cutting off the far west from its supplies--and even declared him an outlaw, La Salle, although he had but lately recovered from a fever, made up his mind to carry his cause to France.
