ish old man, La Barre, in his place. And this man wholly unable to comprehend the great work La Salle had accomplished, treated him with cruel ingratitude, denouncing him as an imposter. He ridiculed the explorer's story of his explorations as a base fiction, saying the country was utterly worthless even if he had found such a country. Stung with mortification and exasperated by insult, La Salle at once sailed for France to lay his case before the king in person. The king met La Salle for the first time, and the great explorer made the speech of his life, detailing with a passionate eloquence, the grandeur of the great river, the beauty of the great countries it passed through, the value of the forests, and the future of its commerce; and captured the king and court of what was then the most powerful government on the earth. Too much could not be done for him. What did he want? He should have anything he asked for. He asked for ships and men to found a colony at the mouth of the great river. They were granted. The ships, the men, and women with them. The ships were good enough,. but their commander turned traitor to La Salle, and the colonists to found a new state, were the scum of all France. They sailed for the Mississippi, but on the way, the Spanish captured one of the ships, and the other missed the mouth of the great river, and landed at Matagorda bay in the territory of what is now Texas. The ships sailed away leaving La Salle and his worthless colonists. They started a settlement where the town of Lavaca now stands. Sickness broke out among them, and they died off like sheep. Of the one hundred and eighty men and womten who landed from the ship, one hundred and thirty-five perished within six months. La Salle made two efforts to get away from the doomed settlement and find the Mississippi, but failed. Then made the third attempt and got as far as the Teche river in what is now St. Laudry county in the state of Louisiana, where he was brutally murdered by the mutiny and treason of three of his men, firing upon him from an ambush. And the murderers, quarreling over the spoils of their leader, hastily suffered the same retributive fate at the hands of their associates; while one Jontel, the narrater of these bloody deeds, and only five others of all that ship's load of people, ever lived to reach the great river. La Salle was killed on the 19th of March, 1687. And the good priest, Anatase who had faithfully followed to the last sad end, dug his grave, buried him, and erected a cross over the remains of the greatest land explorer the world ever saw, at the place where the town of Washington in Louisiana is now located.
La Salle had literally given his life to his king, to France, and to the extension of the Catholic religion. According to the supposed law of nations two hundred years ago, La Salle had given France a good title to all the lands drained by the Mississippi river. And as it turned out in the current of historical and political events, that title was made good to France by the subsequent action of President Thomas Jefferson; thus showing what a great work and a great gift La Salle had conferred on his country. From that territory, and founded upon the title which the acts and labors of La Salle had given to France, and for which the United States paid France fifteen million dollars more than a hundred years ago, the following American states have been peopled and organized: Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Indian Territory, and parts of Montana and Colorado.
But we must not forget that this was not all of the empire which the discoveries of La Salle conferred on France. La Salle had claimed all the lands drained by the Mississippi. In addition to the states named above, this claim covered Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of Wisconsin, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi. France had aready claimed the whole of lower and upper Canada, and for two hundred and thirty years, running from 1524 down to 1753, had held exclusive possession of the same,
