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the long portage to the Illinois, descended it to the Mississippi, which he followed to its mouth, where he set up a cross and the arms of France, April 9, 1682. La Salle fell sick on his voyage up the river, and sent on intelligence of his success, which was carried to France by Father Membré, and was published in Hennepin's work in 1683. When La Salle reached France, projects were taken up by the Government for an expedition against the rich mining country of northern Mexico. Plans were submitted by La Salle and by Peñalosa, a renegade Spaniard, who, while governor of New Mexico in 1662, had penetrated apparently to the Mississippi. La Salle was accordingly sent out in July 1684, with four vessels and a small body of soldiers, ostensibly to found an establishment at the mouth of the Mississippi, but really to push on and secure a favourable base of operations, and gain the aid of the Indians against the Spaniards, while awaiting a more powerful force under Peñalosa. The design was so well masked, and subsequently misrepresented, that he is generally said to have been carried beyond the Mississippi by the treachery of Beaujeu, a naval officer commanding one of the vessels. After running along the coast, La Salle returned to Espiritu Santo Bay, Texas. There he landed his soldiers, but lost one vessel with valuable stores. He refused Beaujeu's offer to obtain aid for him from the West Indies, and when that officer, according to his orders, sailed back, La Salle put up a rude fort. Then for two years, from January 1685 to January 1687, he wasted the time in aimless excursions by land, never getting beyond the present limits of Texas, and making no attempt to explore the coast or reach the Mississippi with his remaining vessel. His colonists and soldiery dwindled away; no reinforcements or expedition under Peñalosa arrived; and in January 1687, leaving part of his force at Fort St Louis, he set out with the rest to reach Canada by way of the Mississippi to obtain relief. His harshness and arbitrary manner had provoked a bitter feeling among his followers, and he was assassinated on the 19th of March, near the Trinity river. Some of the survivors reached Tonty's post on the Arkansas, and returned to France by way of Canada. The party left at the fort were nearly all cut off by the Indians, a few survivors having been rescued by a Spanish force sent to root out the French.
For the various operations of La Salle, the chief works are Hennepin's Description of Louisiana, 1683; Le Clercq's Establishment of the Faith, 1691; Tonty's Narrative (1697), and Joutel's (1713); and the immense collection of documents published by Margry (3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1875-78). Hennepin and Le Clercq's accounts were published partially in Shea's Discovery of the Mississippi, 1852, and recently entire. La Salle's early explorations have been discussed by Tailhan, Verreau, and Shea, historical scholars generally rejecting the claims set up by Margry. Parkman gives La Salle's whole career in his Discovery of the Great West, modified, however, greatly in his La Salle, Boston, 1879. (J. G. S.)
LASCAR, an Anglo-Persian term (from lashkar, an army), which formerly meant a non-combatant, or public follower of the ordnance department. Later on it came to mean any supernumeraries, and especially the native sailors engaged to supplement the crews of European vessels in the Eastern waters. The term is at present applied generally to the seafaring populations of the Indian seaboard manning British vessels sailing between England and the East. The Peninsular and Oriental and other large steamship companies now employ the lascars almost exclusively, preferring them to European crews on account of their greater docility, temperance, and obedience to orders. Nearly all are Mohammedans, and, besides their several native tongues, speak among themselves a sort of lingua franca based on Hindustani, with a considerable admixture of English, Arabic, and other elements. The word lascar is still applied somewhat in its former sense to tent-pitchers, inferior artillerymen, coolies, or sutlers.
LASCARIS, Constantine (?-1493), an eminent Greek scholar, was a member of the family which in the 13th century had furnished three emperors of Nicæa, and was born at Constantinople, but in what year is unknown. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, he took refuge in Italy, where Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, appointed him Greek tutor to his daughter Hippolyta, afterwards married to Alphonso, king of Naples. It was at Milan that Zarot published in 1476 the Grammatica Græca, sive Compendium octo Orationis Partium, of Lascaris, remarkable as being the first book entirely in that language issued from the printing press. After leaving Milan, Lascaris taught for some time in Rome and in Naples, but ultimately, on the invitation of the inhabitants, settled in Messina, where he continued to teach publicly until his death in 1493. Among his numerous pupils here was the celebrated Pietro Bembo. Lascaris bequeathed his library of valuable MSS. to the senate of Messina; the collection was afterwards carried off to Spain and lodged in the Escorial.
Besides the Grammatica, which has often been reprinted, Lascaris wrote little of any kind and nothing of any value apart from the importance which attaches to his position as one of the promoters of the revival of Greek learning in Italy. Two little treatises by him on Sicilians and Calabrians who had written in Greek were first published by Maurolico in 1562, and afterwards reprinted by Zaccaria in the Biblioteca di Storia Letteraria. His dissertation on Orpheus is to be found in the first volume of the Marmora Taurinensia. Iriarte gives some letters of Lascaris in the Regiæ Bibliothecæ Matritensis Codices Græci manuscripti. See Villemain, Lascaris, ou les Grecs du quinzième siécle, Paris, 1825.
LASCARIS, Joannes or Janus (c. 1445-1535), surnamed Rhyndacenus from the river Rhyndacus in Bithynia, his native province, was born about 1445. He was a member of the imperial family of Lascaris, and after the fall of Constantinople fled into Italy, where ultimately he found refuge at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, whose intermediary he was with the sultan Bajazet II. in the purchase of Greek MSS. for the Medicean library. On the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, he, at the invitation of Charles VIII. of France, removed to Paris (1495), where he taught publicly, although he does not appear to have had any official or salaried connexion with the university. Among his pupils were Gulielmus Budæus and Danesius. By Louis XII. he was several times employed on various public missions: and in 1515 he appears to have accepted the invitation of Leo X. to take charge of the Greek college he had founded at Rome. We afterwards find Lascaris employed along with Budæus by Francis I. in the formation of the royal library at Fontainebleau, and also again sent in the service of the French crown to Venice. He died at Rome in 1535.
He edited or wrote Anthologia Epigrammatum Græcorum, in seven books, Florence, 1494; Callimachi Hymni, cum Scholiis Græcis, Florence, about 1494; Scholia Græca in Iliadem, in integrum restituta, Rome, 1517; Homericarum quæstionum liber, et de Nympharum antro in Odyssea opusculum, Rome, 1518; De veris Græcarum litterarum formis ac causis apud antiquos, Paris, 1536. See Jovius, Elogia clarorum virorum; Hody, De Græcis Illustribus; and Bayle's Dictionary, s.v.
LAS CASAS, Bartolomé de (1474-1566), for some time bishop of Chiapa in Mexico, and known to posterity as "The Apostle of the Indies," was a native of Seville, where he was born in 1474. His father, one of the companions of Columbus in the voyage which resulted in the discovery of the New World, was rich enough to be able to send him to Salamanca, where he graduated. In 1498 he accompanied his father in an expedition under Columbus to the West Indies, from which he returned in 1500; and in 1502 he went with Nicolas de Ovando, the governor, to Hayti, where eight years afterwards he was admitted to priestly orders, being the first person to receive that consecration in the colonies. In 1511, the conquest of Cuba having been resolved on, he passed over to that island to
