Rouen, Normandy, France. The Caveliers, though not ennobled, were citizens of marked social and some official distinction in that ancient and wealthy city. His father, Jean, and his uncle Henri, were rich merchants, and the latter, at least, was one of the "Hundred Associates" of Cardinal Richelieu, a syndicate largely interested in trade with the territorial possessions of France, in America.[1] Being an earnest Catholic, Robert, at an early age, became connected with the Jesuits, and in their schools acquired an excellent education, especially in the higher mathematics and the exact sciences. His nature, however, was one which chafed under the restrictions of a monastic order; and he subsequently withdrew from them, though on good terms, and with a reputation as a bright scholar, and of unimpeachable morals. Free to seek a wider field for his activities than that offered by an ecclesiastical career, his attention was drawn to Canada, where an elder brother, John Cavelier, a priest of the Sulpitian order, was then residing. But, as his connection with and withdrawal from the Jesuit order had—under a recent French law—deprived him of any claim upon the estate of his recently deceased father, he lacked the means needed for the voyage thither. Finally, he obtained an allowance (probably from his family) of 300 or 400 livres, with which slender sum he sailed to seek his fortune, in the spring of 1666.
Shortly after his arrival at Montreal, he received from the Superior of the Sulpitian Seminary, which had recently become the feudal lord of that city, a large grant of land (a "seigniory") in that vicinity.[2] This he immediately proceeded to improve, by the introduction of new settlers as tenants, the erection of buildings, and the cultivation of the soil. It is probable, however, that even before coming
- ↑ "The Great La Salle," an article in Harper's Magazine, for February, 1905, by Henry Loomis Nelson, L. H. D. Also Parkman's Pioneers of New France, Champlain edition, ii, 258, 260.
- ↑ This feudal estate, some eight miles from Montreal, bears at the present day the name of La Chine (China), modernly spelled Lachine, which was said to have been applied to it in derision of his first fruitless voyage.
