er rocks twice the height of the
highest pine tree." The turbulent torrent of the river could not be
breasted, so they did not see the falls, but rounded on up Lake Ontario
to the region now near the city of Hamilton. Here they had prepared to
portage overland to some stream that would bring them down to Lake Erie,
when, to their amazement, they learned from a passing Indian camp that
two Frenchmen were on their way down this very lake from searching copper
mines on Lake Superior.

{130} The two Frenchmen were Louis Jolliet, yet in his early twenties, to
become famous as an explorer of the Mississippi, and one Monsieur Jean
Pere, soldier of fortune, who was to set France and England by the ears
on Hudson Bay. September 24, as La Salle and Dollier were dragging their
canoes through the autumn-colored sumacs of the swamp, there plunged from
among the russet undergrowth the two wanderers from the north,--Jolliet
and Pere, dumb with amazement to meet a score of men toiling through this
tenantless wilderness. The two parties fell on each other's necks with
delight and camped together. Jolliet told a story that set the
missionaries' zeal on fire and inflamed La Salle with mad eagerness to
pass on to the goal of his discoveries. Jolliet and Pere had not found
the copper mine for Talon on Lake Superior, but they had learned two
important secrets from the Indians. First, if Iroquois blocked the way
up the Ottawa, there was clear, easy water way down to Quebec by Lake
Huron and Lake Ste. Claire and Lake Erie. Jolliet's guide had brought
them down this way, first of white men to traverse the Great Lakes, only
leaving them as they reached Lake Erie and advising them to portage
across up Grand River to avoid Niagara Falls. Second, the Indians told
him the Ohio could be reached by way of Lake Erie.

Sitting round the camp fires near what is now Port Stanley, La Salle
secretly resolved to go on down to Quebec with Jolliet and rearrange his
plans independent of the missionaries. The portaging through swamps had
affected La Salle's health, and he probably judged he could make quicker
time unaccompanied by missionaries. As for Galinee and Dollier, when
they knelt in prayer that night, they fervently besought Heaven to let
them carry the Gospel of truth to those benighted heathen west of Lake
Michigan, of whom Jolliet told. Dollier de Casson sent a letter by
Jolliet to Montreal, begging the Sulpicians to establish a mission ne