What had the pathfinders of
New France accomplished? Draw a line from Cape Breton to James Bay, from
James Bay down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Gulf of
Mexico across to Cape Breton. Inside the triangle lies the French empire
of the New World,--in area the size of half Europe. That had the
pathfinders accomplished for France.

La Salle was too ill to proceed at once from the Mississippi to Quebec.
As long as Frontenac remained governor, La Salle could rely on his hungry
creditors and vicious enemies--now eager as wolves, to confiscate his
furs and seize his seigniory at Fort Frontenac--being restrained by the
strong hand of the Viceroy; but while La Salle lay ill at the Illinois
fort, Frontenac was succeeded by La Barre as viceroy; and the new
Governor was a weak, avaricious old man, ready to believe any evil tale
carried to his ears. He at once sided with La Salle's enemies, and wrote
the French King that the explorer's "_head was turned_"; that La Salle
"_accomplished nothing, but spent his life leading bandits through the
forests, pillaging Indians; {141} that all the story of discovering the
Mississippi was a fabrication_." When La Salle came from the wilderness
he found himself a ruined man. Fort Frontenac had been seized by his
enemies. Supplies for the Mississippi had been stopped, and officers
were on their way to seize the forts there.

Leaving Tonty in charge of his interests, La Salle sailed for France
where he had a strong friend at court in Frontenac. As it happened,
Spain and France were playing at the game of checkmating each other; and
it pleased the French King to restore La Salle's forts and to give the
Canadian explorer four ships to colonize the Mississippi by way of the
Gulf of Mexico. This was to oust Spain from her ancient claim on the
gulf; but Beaujeu, the naval commander of the expedition, was not in
sympathy with La Salle. Beaujeu was a noble by birth; La Salle, only a
noble of the merchant classes. The two bickered and quarreled from the
first. By some blunder, when the ships reached the Gulf of Mexico, laden
with colonists, in December of 1684, they missed the mouth of the
Mississippi and anchored off Texas. The main ship sailed back to France.
Two others were wrecked, and La Salle in desperation, after several trips
seeking the Mississippi, resolved to go overland by way of the
Mississippi valley and the Illinois to obtain aid in Canada for his
colonists.