La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

;1673.] RETURN TO CANADA. 75another locality. 1A chief, with a band of young warriors,offered to guide them to the Lake of the Illinoisthat is to say, Lake Michigan. Thither they repairedand, coasting its shores, reached Green Bay at the endof September, after an absence of about four months,during which they had paddled their canoes somewhat more than two thousand five hundred miles. 2Marquette remained to recruit his exhaustedstrength; but Joliet descended to Quebec, to bearthe report of his discovery to Count Frontenac.Fortune had wonderfully favored him on his longand perilous journey; but now she abandoned him onthe very threshold of home. At the foot of therapids of La Chine, and immediately above Montreal,1Marquette says that it consisted at this time of seventy-fourlodges.These, like the Huron and Iroquois lodges, contained eachseveral fires and several families. This village was about sevenmiles below the site of the present town of Ottawa.2The journal of Marquette, first published in an imperfect formby Thevenot, in 1681, has been reprinted by Mr. Lenox, under thedirection of Mr. Shea, from the manuscript preserved in the archivesof the Canadian Jesuits. It will also be found in Shea's Discoveryand Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, and the RelationsJnedites of Martin. The true map of Marquette accompanies allthese publications. The map published by Thevenot and repro>duced by Bancroft is not Marquette's. The original of this, ofwhich I have a fac-simile, bears the title Carte de la NouvelleDecouverte que les Peres Jesuites ont faite en Vannee 1672, et continuepar le Plre Jacques Marquette, etc. The return route of theexpedition is incorrectly laid down on it. A manuscript map ofthe Jesuit Raffeix, preserved in the Bibliotheque Imperiale, is moreaccurate in this particular. I have also another contemporary manuscriptmap, indicating the various Jesuit stations in the West atthis time, and representing the Mississippi, as^uette. For these and other maps, see Appendix.discovered by Mar