and Lake Superior
would cost far more than the metal was worth. In consequence of this
clamor his commission was revoked.

Perhaps it was to compensate him for the outlays into which he had been
drawn that the colonial minister presently authorized him to embark for
Louisiana and pursue his enterprise with that infant colony, instead of
Canada, as his base of operations. Thither, therefore, he went; and in
April, 1700, set out for the Sioux country with twenty-five men, in a
small vessel of the kind called a "felucca," still used in the
Mediterranean. Among the party was an adventurous youth named Penecaut,
a ship-carpenter by trade, who had come to Louisiana with Iberville two
years before, and who has left us an account of his voyage with Le
Sueur.[360]

The party slowly made their way, with sail and oar, against the muddy
current of the Mississippi, till they reached the Arkansas, where they
found an English trader from Carolina. On the tenth of June, spent with
rowing, and half starved, they stopped to rest at a point fifteen
leagues above the mouth of the Ohio. They had staved off famine with the
buds and leaves of trees; but now, by good luck, one of them killed a
bear, and, soon after, the Jesuit Limoges arrived from the neighboring
mission of the Illinois, in a canoe well stored with provisions. Thus
refreshed, they passed the mouth of the Missouri on the thirteenth of
July, and soon after were met by three Canadians, who brought them a
letter from the Jesuit Marest, warning them that the river was infested
by war-parties. In fact, they presently saw seven canoes of Sioux
warriors, bound against the Illinois; and not long after, five Canadians
appeared, one of whom had been badly wounded in a recent encounter with
a band of Outagamies, Sacs, and Winnebagoes bound against the Sioux. To
take one another's scalps had been for ages the absorbing business and
favorite recreation of all these Western tribes. At or near the
expansion of the Mississippi called Lake Pepin, the voyagers found a
fort called Fort Perrot, after its builder;[361] and on an island near
the upper end of the lake, another similar structure, built by Le Sueur
himself on his last visit to the place. These forts were mere stockades,
occupied from time to time by the roving fur-traders as their occasions
required.

Towards the end of September, Le Sueur and his followers reached the
mouth of the St. Peter, which they ascended to Blue Earth River