of bidding defiance to Spanish incursions, and of controlling the entire trade and colonization of the entire Mississippi valley, was most gladly and promptly accepted by them. La Forest, La Salle's lieutenant, being then in Paris, was dispatched to Canada, empowered to recover and reoccupy, in La Salle's name, the Forts Frontenac and St. Louis of the Illinois, from which he had been dispossessed by Governor La Barre; and to the latter the King personally wrote, ordering him to restore to La Salle, or his representative, all the property of which he had been unjustly deprived. As to the equipment of the expedition, he was given four vessels, instead of the two for which he had asked, viz., the Joly, a 36-gun ship of the royal navy, a 6-gun ship, a store-ship, and a ketch. Soldiers were enrolled, besides 30 volunteers, many of whom were gentlemen and of the better class of the bourgeois; several families, and girls matrimonially inclined, as colonists; together with pilots, mechanics, laborers, and six friars and priests of the Sulpitian and Récollet orders.[1]
Unfortunately, the expedition, from the first, was hampered with a divided command. La Salle's request had been for its sole command, with a subaltern officer, one or two pilots, and entire control of the route they should take, and of the troops and colonists on land. But the command of the ships was given, by the Minister, to one Beaujeu, an old and experienced officer of the royal navy—and even before the expedition set sail, a collision of opinions and authority arose between the two heads of the expedition, which imperiled its success.[2]
Finally, on the 24th of July, 1684, the expedition sailed, from Rochelle. Its further history is to be found in the following pages of Joutel's Journal.
- ↑ La Salle's brother, the Abbe Cavelier, Fathers Membre, Douay and Le Clerc, all more or less afterward associated with American exploration, were among this clerical contingent.
- ↑ Most interesting as to these troubles, and La Salle's mental condition at this critical point, are the pages 97-109, vol. II of Parkman's La Salle (Champlain edition).
