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

1675-78.] LA SALLE AT FORT FRONTENAC. 121a mill, and a bakery. Nine small cannon weremounted on the walls. Two officers and a surgeon,with ten or twelve soldiers, made up the garrison;and three or four times that number of masons,laborers, and canoe-men were at one time maintainedat the place.Along the shore south of the fort was a smallvillage of French families, to whom La Salle hadgranted farms, and, farther on, a village of Iroquois,whom he had persuaded to settle here. Near thesevillages were the house and chapel of two Re'colletfriars, Luc Buisset and Louis Hennepin. More thana hundred French acres ofland had been cleared ofwood, and planted in part with crops ; while cattle,fowls, and swine had been brought up from Montreal.Four vessels, of from twenty-five to forty tons, hadbeen built for the lake and the river; but canoesserved best for ordinary uses, and La Salle's followersbecame so skilled in managing them that they werereputed the best canoe-men in America.of the forestsFeudal lordaround him, commander of a garrisonraised and paid by himself, founder of the mission,and patron of the church, he reigned the autocrat ofhis lonely little empire. 1/1 Ultat de la depense faite par M r -de la Salle, Gouverneur du FortFrontenac. Recit de Nicolas de la Salle. Reveue faite au Fort deFrontenac, 1677 ; Memoire sur le Projet du Sieur de la Salle (Margry,i. 329). Plan of Fort Frontenac, published by Faillon, from theoriginal sent to France by Denonville in 1685. Relation des Dicouvertesdu Sieur de la Salle.When Frontenac was at the fort in September,1677, he found only four habitants. It appears, by the Rela-