11

CHAPTER IL
THE EIVEE AKB ITS EXPLOREBS.
LA SAIXE himself sued for certain high privileges, and they were
graciously accorded him by Louis XIV. of inflated memory. Chief
among them was the privilege to explore, far and wide, and build
forts, and stake out continents, and hand the same over to the king,
and pay the expenses himself; receiving, in return, some little advan-
tages of one sort or another; among them the monopoly of buffalo
hides. He spent several years and about all of his money, in making
perilous and painful trips between Montreal and a fort which he had
built on the Illinois, before he at last succeeded in getting his expedi-
tion in such a shape that he could strike for the Mississippi
And meantime other parties had had better fortune. In 1673
Joliet the merchant, and Marquctte the priest, crossed the country
and reached the banks of the Mississippi. They went by way of the
Great Lakes; and from Green Bay, in canoes, by way of Fox Elver
and the "Wisconsin. Marquette had solemnly contracted, on the feast
of the Immaculate Conception, that if the Virgin would permit him
to discover the great river, he would name it Conception, in her
honour. He kept his word. In that day, all explorers travelled
with an outfit of priests. De Soto had twenty-four with him. La
Salle had several, also. The expeditions were often out of meat, and
scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other requisites
for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint
chroniclers of the time phrased it, to ' explain hell to the salvages.'
. On the 17th of June, 1673, the canoes of Joliet and Marquette
and their five subordinates reached the junction of the Wisconsin
with the Mississippi Mr. Parkman says: ' Before them a wide and