nd one ship
was lost. Not until the end of December was a landing made, and then
not at the Mississippi's mouth but at a spot far to the west of it, on
the sands of Matagorda Bay.

Finding that he had missed his reckonings, La Salle directed a part of
his company to follow the shore. After many days of fruitless search,
they established a permanent camp and sent the largest vessel back to
France. Their repeated efforts to reach the Mississippi overland were
in vain. Finally, in the winter of 1687, La Salle with a score of his
strongest followers struck out northward, determined to make their way
to the Lakes, where they might find succor. To follow the detail of
their dreary march would be tedious. The hardships of the journey,
without adequate equipment or provisions, and the incessant danger of
attack by the Indians increased petty jealousies into open mutiny. On
the 19th of March, 1687, the courageous and indefatigable La Salle
was treacherously assassinated by one of his own party. Here in the
fastnesses of the Southwest died at the age of forty-four the
intrepid explorer of New France, whom Tonty called--perhaps not
untruthfully--"one of the greatest men of this age."

"Thus," writes a later historian with all the perspective of
the intervening years, "was cut short the career of a man whose
personality is impressed in some respects more strongly than that
of any other upon the history of New France. His schemes were too
far-reaching to succeed. They required the strength and resources of
a half-dozen nations like the France of Louis XIV. Nevertheless the
lines upon which New France continued to develop were substantially
those which La Salle had in mind, and the fabric of a wilderness
empire, of which he laid the foundations, grew with the general growth
of colonization, and in the next century became truly formidable. It
was not until Wolfe climbed the Heights of Abraham that the great
ideal of La Salle was finally overthrown."

It would be difficult, indeed, to find among the whole array of
explorers which history can offer in all ages a perseverance more
dogged in the face of abounding difficulties. Phoenix-like, he rose
time after time from the ashes of adversity. Neither fatigue nor
famine, disappointment nor even disaster, availed to swerve him from
his purpose. To him, more than to any one else of his time, the French
could justly attribute their early hold upon the great regions of the
West. Other expl