AN ILL-STARRED VOYAGE
On the 24th day of July, three long years before, these five
weather-worn men and their comrades had seen the shores of France fade
slowly from their sight. Out of the harbor of Rochelle had sailed that
summer day twenty-four ships. Twenty of the number soon drew away from
the rest and turned their bows toward the mouth of the St. Lawrence and
New France; the other four sailed on alone.
On board the four ships were near three hundred souls, embarking on a
voyage no one of them had made before. One of the boats, the Joly, a
ship of war, carried thirty-odd pieces of cannon. But it carried also
more precious cargo. Monsieur Beaujeu, a proud man and bold, was its
captain; and with him, as leader of the colony that thus fared forth to
the glory of the King of France, was Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.
Restless and ambitious as ever, he now felt under his feet the roll of
decks which the king had given him with godspeed to find the mouth of
the Mississippi River and plant there a settlement that would be the
beginning of a great new empire in the heart of the American wilderness.
The King of France had caught a glimpse of La Salle’s vision of the
future of the Great Valley. He had listened, too, while La Salle had
whispered into his eager ears the story of how the hated Spaniards,
clinging these many years to the rich lands of Mexico, would fall before
the attacks of the French, aided by the hordes of Indians whom they
would recruit from the colony about Fort St. Louis and from the lower
Mississippi Valley.
In the four ships were a hundred soldiers; and since colonies have need
of such, there were carpenters and tool-makers and bakers and
stonemasons and engineers. There were also priests and friars—among
others La Salle’s brother, the Abbé Cavelier, and Father Anastasius
Douay. On board one of the ships was the energetic figure of Father
Membré, who was no stranger to the Great Valley of the Mississippi. He
had entered it with La Salle, and later had hardly struggled out of it
with his friend of the iron hand after the Iroquois raid. He had come
back with the gallant party that paddled down the length of the valley
to the sea, and had been the one to carry news of the voyage to Canada
and to France. Still did he cling to the side of his leader, stanch
friend that he was.
Born in the same town of Rouen with La Salle was a man named Henri
Joutel. When a mere boy he joined the army, and after serving about
sixteen years he had come back to his native town in time to join others
who were shipping with their townsman for the trip across the sea. Last
of all, these four ships held a handful of women and girls who were
ready to try the perils of the sea and the fearsome dangers of a strange
land.
Thus they had sailed, a company of colonists of all classes and
descriptions—good men and bad, brave men and weak, workers and drones,
gentlemen and stout-hearted peasants, debauched nobles and the riffraff
of seaport towns; men who took their load and endured through hardship,
sickness, and despair; and men whom Joutel declared were fit only to eat
part of the provisions.
Never had the unconquerable spirit of La Salle met such stubborn blows
as now. In the first place the arrangements of the voyage were well-nigh
fatal to success, for the company had two heads, each one a man
accustomed to command alone and impatient of any other authority.
Beaujeu, an old naval officer who was the captain of the fleet, saw
little of greatness in La Salle, and looked upon him as a dreamer if not
a fanatic. La Salle, leader of the colony, with authority to determine
the route to be taken, looked with distrust upon Beaujeu, held his own
counsel about his plans, and regarded the captain as his enemy and the
chief obstacle to the successful outcome of his mission. Before ever the
ships set sail these two men had their quarrels, and on the open seas it
was no better.
Years of bitter experiences, of wilderness hardships, of daily and
nightly perils, of disappointments and losses, had hardened the temper
of La Salle’s will; and these years had not softened a certain coldness
and harshness of manner that lost him many friends. Suspicion and doubt
of his fellows deepened in his heart with every turn of his wheel of
fortune. With all his remarkable power over the Indians, he constantly
failed to understand and make himself loved by the men of his own race
over whom he was in command. Naturally with his mongrel company of
voyagers things went sadly wrong. No one appreciated better than Tonty,
as he listened to the tale of the Abbé and Joutel, how adventures and
trials such as the party were bound to meet would try each man and show
him for a true man, a knave, or a weakling.
At the island of Santo Domingo the Joly made port and lay to, waiting
for the balance of the fleet which had fallen behind. There were fifty
sick in the company, among them La Salle. But there was much to be done
on shore. While walking one day with Joutel in the streets of the little
town of Petit Gouave, La Salle was overcome by a sudden weakness and
sank to the ground. Joutel took him as soon as possible to a house which
had been temporarily rented by the Duhaut brothers, two members of La
Salle’s company. Before he was himself again one of the Duhauts rashly
told him that Spanish buccaneers had captured one of the four ships, and
straightway his sickness returned. Joutel and the Abbé said little to
Tonty of the elder of these Duhauts, but in their own minds they thought
of him with a hate that had no basis in the tale they were telling.
For many weeks La Salle and his voyagers were delayed at Santo Domingo,
gathering supplies for the rest of the voyage. More of the company fell
ill; and some, fearful of coming dangers, deserted. At last they got
away late in November and sailed west along the southern coast of Cuba.
Soon they had passed the long island and turned the prows of their ships
toward the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
Two or three days before the end of the year 1684, they sighted land.
Thinking that they were near the Bay of Appalache, they sailed westward,
in cold wind and rain and fog, hoping each day to find the mouth of the
Great River. Sometimes they landed men to explore a river mouth or
lagoon. Once, on the 6th of January, they came to what appeared to be
the mouth of a bay with an island in the midst of it, but La Salle,
still convinced that the Mississippi was far to the west, pushed on
along the coast. As January drew to a close they found the shore line
trending more and more to the south, and even La Salle began to think
they had gone beyond the river they were seeking.
At length they landed on the shore of a bay where a river ran down to
the Gulf, and the perplexed leader of the wandering colony made up his
mind that they had found the western mouth of the Mississippi. One of
the ships, coming into the bay under the ill-management of the pilot,
ran aground and broke apart. In despair La Salle put his men to saving
the cargo. Under great difficulties provisions and ammunition were
rescued from the fated ship and piled on the lonely shore. Through the
long night that followed unfriendly Indians prowled about eager for
plunder, and sentinels walked up and down upon the sand keeping watch
among the precious boxes and barrels, while the miserable band of
colonists tried to get sleep.
Discouraging as was this beginning, greater misfortunes were not slow in
coming to the colony. La Salle’s nephew, Moranget, hotheaded and unwise,
visited an Indian village with some of the men to trade and to look for
stolen property; and when they took leave they made off with Indian
blankets and canoes. Upon their return they camped at night, their
sentinel slept, and the Indians crept upon them. War-whoops rose in the
air and into the group of sleeping white men by the smouldering fire
came a volley of arrows, killing two of the company. Moranget finally
succeeded in reaching the camp by the shore with the ill news upon his
lips and an arrow in his shoulder.
No man knew better than La Salle the evil results that would surely
follow such relations with the Indians; but there was no mending matters
now. Ill luck blew in every wind; what with keeping constant watch upon
prowling Indians, fighting prairie fires that threatened to reach the
provisions and gunpowder, and burying along the sandy shore those of the
company who fell sick and died, the colony of La Salle was making
wretched progress.
Leaving a hundred and thirty of the company in charge of Joutel, La
Salle with a handful of men went off to explore. He came back with his
own stubborn mind convinced that he was not so near the Mississippi as
he had supposed. Beyond a doubt he and all of his men were lost.
Beaujeu and a part of the company had already sailed away; they were
returning to France to tell their friends that La Salle was landed on
the shore of the Gulf amid hostile Indians and with no certain knowledge
of where he was. As a matter of fact La Salle had passed the mouth of
the Mississippi by nearly four hundred miles and was camped on the
shores of what is now Matagorda Bay in Texas.